History of genetics established the concept of dominance, recognizing that when some plant varieties are crossed, certain characteristics (present in one parent) usually appear in the offspring; he also found that some ancestral characteristics found in neither parent may appear in offspring. However, plant breeders made little attempt to establish a theoretical foundation for their work or to share their knowledge with current work of physiology, although Gartons Agricultural Plant Breeders in England explained their system. In breeding experiments between 1856 and 1865, Gregor Mendel first traced inheritance patterns of certain traits in pea plants and showed that they obeyed simple statistical rules
Gregor Mendel next thirty-five years. His paper was criticized at the time, but is now considered a seminal work. Notably, Charles Darwin was not aware of Mendel's paper, and it is envisaged that if he had been aware of it, genetics as we know it now might have taken hold much earlier. Mendel's scientific biography thus provides an example of the failure of obscure, highly original, innovators to receive the attention they deserve. Mendel began his studies on heredity using mice. He was at St. Thomas's Abbey but his bishop did not like one of his friars studying animal sex, so Mendel