Description: Arabidopsis thaliana is the model plant for both traditional and modern genetic studies for over 70 years. As a member of the mustard family, it is well suited for genetic studies because of the short generation time of only 5 weeks, numerous seeds per plant and the small plant size. Arabidopsis requires only moist soil and fluorescent light for rapid growth. Self-fertilization allows new mutations to be made homozygous with minimal effort. Cross-fertilization can also be simply and rapidly effected when desired, which make the genetic mapping and the production of multiple mutant stocks possible.