Arabidopsis, the botanical Drosophila: from mouse cress to model organism

The small flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana is the best-studied model organism in plant biology. More resources are allocated to research on this little weed than to the study of well-known favourites such as worms, fruit flies and mice. Yet, up to the early 1980s plant biologists had every good reason to ignore Arabidopsis: neither did it seem to possess the characteristics of a good model organism, nor did it have any agricultural promise. The sudden prestige acquired by Arabidopsis research thus constitutes a remarkable historical puzzle. What made the mouse cress into the most successful model organism to date?