Particulate inheritance traits are inherited from one generation to the next. Blending inheritance was the common ideal at the time, but was later discredited by the experiments of Gregor Mendel. Mendel proposed the theory of particulate inheritance by using pea plants ("Pisum sativum") to explain how variation can be inherited and maintained over time. Since Mendel used experimental methods to devise his particulate inheritance theory, he developed three basic laws of inheritance: the Law of Segregation, the Law of Independent Assortment, and the Law of Dominance: Mendel's experiment with tall and short pea plants demonstrates how each individual plant has two particles
Johann Karl Nestler stock animals and their offspring Nestler hoped to explain the (genetic history). Examination of the records of the ancestors of the best breeding animals, called by Nestler "developmental history" () was for him the reverse side of the same coin. According to Wood and Orel the search for rules of heredity in sheep created an atmosphere of enquiry about heredity in general, which had influence on later work of Gregor Johann Mendel, himself a student at the Faculty of Philosophy in 1840–43. Nestler was also a very active member of the "Moravian-Silesian Society for Advancement of Agriculture" (, in which