The results of my germination and emergence experiment

26 June

During the past 6 months I have been involved in my own investigation on the effects of temperature on seed germination and plant establishment. In a previous field trial of beetroot only 50% of the plants emerged and it was thought this was due to several hot days. The question arose of whether this was due to the high temperature reducing germination or if seedlings were able to draw up enough water from the soil for transpiration. My experiment showed that although a temperature spike increased the rate of plant emergence, and a temperature drop slowed down emergence, neither affected the total emerged. As a concurrent experiment I investigated how the amount of soil moisture affected germination and emergence. I discovered the less the soil moisture percentage the less the germination rate.

Back in Wellington

19-20 June

 

We had our last set of curriculum focus days. We focused on the capability of ‘critiquing evidence’. Mostly it means you need to repeat or replicate experiments so you can gather enough data to come out with a representative average. It also means you have to look at a range of data to look for abnormalities, as it may mean the method wasn’t done correctly.

 

We also looked at a bit of transition back to school ideas. One of the tutors was away so we had Michael Fenton as a guest tutor. He used to do this programme but now he runs the open polytech science teaching diploma course. As he said, they gave us seeds of ideas, a bit of a look-see into several ideas. One of the ideas was a science table of curious objects.

our science table of curiosities

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a test of the power of air!
...and the strength of balloons?

 

What is the most impactful science we can do?

18 June 

 

I read on the i-plant site a quote from the Chief Operating Officer:  “The most impactful science we can do is that which cares for the environment, reduces waste and improves the wellness of consumers through high quality, safe and healthy food.” I think this nicely sums up the goal of all Plant and Food Research.

Layers of onions...

11-16 June

Today I cut, labelled and weighed 505 onion skin samples. There are 5 plots, for each plot I chose 10 onions to take 4 core samples of the brown skin. Each sample then was separated into the skin’s layers. Each layer was separated into a patty tin with a label.  I then weighed them. Their weights ranged from 0.2g to 0.0088g depending if I could separate the layers.

 

After I had recorded all the fresh weights the samples were put into the oven for 24 hours to dry. Then each skin was weighed again to find out the dry weight.

 

Unfortunately when I went to take the onions out of the oven I noticed some of the layers separating so instead of one sample I now had 2 or 3 or in one case 6 samples!

 

 

Altogether I weighed 634 dried skin samples.

So how many of the original fresh samples separated into more layers?

Why was I doing this? It’s an ongoing experiment looking at quality of onions. In this case they are looking at the quality of the skins.

Taking a core sample

weigh each layer of the sample

label each layer of each sample

put the samples into the oven and weigh once dried

4 samples were collected from each onion

the dried onion skins

 

Beetroot Single vs Double Germination

10 April - 13 June

I have discovered that some beetroot seeds will provide two plants from one seed. I wonder if they grow as well as seeds that only provide one seed.

Hmm.. time for another experiment.

First I had to germinate enough beetroot seeds to collect at 15 doubles. Then I planted them in pots in a cross formation, with the centre being the double and the edges being singles. This is to simulate their growth in the field with other beetroot.

I also planted 15 singles in the same way. So, in all I now had 30 pots - enough replication to give a fair result.

Now to wait for them to start growing.

Germinating the seeds

First emergence

Counting the number of true leaves to record leaf emegence

Measuring the length of the same true leaf each week to record growth

A double...the pink mark the leafs I am measuring

A single

Uh oh! The leaves are changing colour.

Turns out that the leaves change colour like this when they are too cold, too dark and too wet.

 

Bring on summer!!!

 

 



Once I have enough data collected I will compare their growth. Hopefully before all the leaves reach their senescence (die).