So why did Gregor Mendel decide to use pea plants as his model organism to study inheritance and genetics? Well, it turns out that Mendel discovered that pea plants were the ideal model organism for studying inheritance and genetics for multiple reasons. And we've got 5 of these reasons listed down below here in our image.
And so the very first reason that Gregor Mendel chose pea plants as his model organism is because pea plants are easy to cultivate, grow, or maintain. Now, the second reason that Gregor Mendel chose pea plants is because pea plants grow relatively quickly, and he's able to get multiple generations in a relatively short period of time. Now the third reason that Gregor Mendel chose pea plants is because pea plants produce multiple offspring. And the 4th reason is because pea plants have many inheritable traits or many traits that they can pass on from generation to generation. And the 5th and final reason why Gregor Mendel chose pea plants is because they are easy to control. It's easy to control pea plant fertilization. Or in other words, it's very easy to control which pea plants he's going to mate with each other. Also, pea plants have this special ability to self-fertilize, meaning that he can use the same pea plant to create multiple generations.
And so we'll get to talk more and more about self-fertilization and cross-fertilization later in our course as we move forward. And we'll also continue to talk more and more about Mendel's experiments and his discoveries as we move forward. So I'll see you all in our next video.