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Early history

A. thaliana was first described by Johannes Thal, and later renamed in his honor. (See the Taxonomy section of the main article.) Friedrich Laibach outlined why A. thaliana might be a good experimental system in 1943 and collected a large number of natural accessions. A. thaliana is largely self-pollinating, so these accessions represent inbred strains,with high homozygosity that simplifies genetic analysis.Natural A. thaliana accessions are often referred to as " ecotypes ".Laibach had earlier (1907) determined the A. thaliana chromosome number (5) as part of his PhD research. Laibach's student Erna Reinholz described mutagenesis of A. thaliana with X-ray radiation in 1945.