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.