Mendel carried out his classical experiments on inheritance using

  • A. maize
  • B. the garden pea
  • C. Drosophila
  • D. the snapdragon

Explanation

Pisum sativum was an ideal choice because it has clearly contrasting characters, is normally self pollinating so pure lines are easy to keep, can be cross pollinated by hand, and produces a large number of offspring in one season. Drosophila became the standard organism only later, with Morgan's work on linkage and sex linkage, roughly half a century after Mendel.

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