Gregor Mendel didn't have a single, overarching "hypothesis" in his pea plant experiments. Instead, he had several research questions he aimed to answer, which then led to him formulating his laws of inheritance.

Here are some of the key questions Mendel explored:

* How are traits passed from parents to offspring? He questioned the prevailing idea of blending inheritance, where offspring would inherit a mix of their parents' traits.

* Are traits inherited as individual units, or as a whole package? Mendel wondered if traits were linked, or if they could be passed down independently.

* What are the mechanisms of inheritance? He wanted to understand how traits were determined and how they were passed on through generations.

Based on his observations and experimental results, Mendel formulated his laws of inheritance:

* Law of Segregation: Each inherited trait is determined by two alleles (one from each parent), and these alleles separate during gamete formation, so each gamete receives only one allele.

* Law of Independent Assortment: Alleles for different traits are inherited independently of each other, meaning that the inheritance of one trait does not affect the inheritance of another.

These laws, derived from Mendel's careful experimentation and analysis, laid the foundation for our understanding of genetics.