Gregor Mendel didn't study "genetics" because the term didn't exist in his time. He studied pea plants, specifically their heritable traits.

Through his meticulous experiments with pea plants, he observed how traits like flower color, seed shape, and plant height were passed down from one generation to the next. He then formulated his now famous laws of inheritance, which laid the foundation for the field of genetics we know today.

So, while he didn't study genetics directly, his work on pea plants and his groundbreaking laws of inheritance are considered the foundational work of modern genetics.