Chapter 1: Mendel’s little secret.
Gregor Mendel, a Moravian monk, carefully bred peas in separate breeding lines, crossing and backcrossing to watch how traits appeared in future generations. He found out that traits were transmitted to future generations from parent plants. Mendel also found out that there were certain plants such as the hawkweed that did not need any kind of sex to reproduce. Simply put, the plant was asexual hence self-reproducing.
Mendel is considered as the founding father of genetics and despite his death, more than one century later, scientists are still struggling to investigate this botanical mystery that is Apoximis. All this ...