What was the difference between mendel's work in the inheritance of traits and those done earlier?

There were many differences in ways of approach towards the experiment from Mendel and those before them.

Gregor Johann Mendel is known as the father of genetics. He carried out a series of experiments which lead to the deduction of the 2 laws of genetics - the law of segregation and law of independent assortment.

But mendel was not the 1st person to carry out such experiments. But he was the only person who succeeded among them. This is because mendel has several differences from them im his experiments.

Firstly, he chose pea plants which has several easily noticeable characters and he concentrated on one characteristics at a time.

Secondly, he was lucky as the characters he chose were on different chromosomes.

Thirdly, he did his experiment neatly and carried out the artificial pollination with all care so that there's no contamination.

Lastly, he kept careful statistical record of the numbers and characters of progenies.