Gregor Mendel cross-bred some 28,000 garden pea plants (Pisum sativum) and studied traits such as their flower colour to make discoveries about genetic inheritance.Credit: imageBROKER/AlamyThe Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel completed his groundbreaking work on genetic inheritance more than 160 years ago, after carefully studying seven traits in peas, including the shape and colour of their seeds and pods. Yet until now, scientists still hadn’t worked out which genes drive three of those traits ...