Snow pea relationship—and are therefore a useful companion plant, especially useful to grow intercropped with green, leafy vegetables that benefit from high nitrogen content in their soil. Snow peas can be grown in open fields during cool seasons and can thus be cultivated during winter and spring seasons. Storage of the pea with films of polymethylpentene at a temperature of 5 °C and a concentration of oxygen and carbon dioxide of 5 kPa augments the shelf life, internal and external characteristics of the plant. Austrian scientist and monk Gregor Mendel used peas which he called "Pisum saccharatum" in his famous experiments demonstrating
Dominance (genetics) their associated phenotypes; one allele can be dominant over a second allele, recessive to a third allele, and codominant to a fourth. Also, an allele may be dominant for a particular aspect of phenotype but not for other aspects influenced by the same gene. Dominance differs from epistasis, a relationship in which an allele of one gene affects the expression of another allele at a different gene. The concept of dominance was introduced by Gregor Johann Mendel. Though Mendel, "The Father of Genetics", first used the term in the 1860s, it was not widely known until the early twentieth century.