Hi Lauro,

Oh no, did they all die? If so, well, I hope you can still take the measurements or data you need from another person in class, now you know, a lot of plants will die when they get too stressed, that's a nice result although sad for the experiment.

Now, about the question, I would guess it's, why did the plants with high amounts of nutrients didn't develop fruits, right? Well, I can think a number of reasons for that.

1. Pollination, not every pollination event in successful, so maybe this was one of those cases, maybe the flowers weren't fully mature so the stigma (the part of the flower that receives the pollen) wasn't fully developed. Maybe the pollen was damaged too. Or even a mistake during the pollination process is the reason why this happened, errors done by researchers are really common, even if people try to avoid them, they can and will happen from time to time, so we need to take them into consideration, even if they are not likely in this case because you all did an amazing job ;).

2. Plants, when under stress conditions, like having too much fertilizer (nutrients) in the soil, don't always behave like they would normally do. It's been reported that plants with excess nutrients available will sometimes use them to grow leaves, stems and other parts of the plant, not related to reproduction, maybe it used too much time and energy building the flowers, but didn't get the chance to develop fruits.

Another probability, also related to stress, is that a lot of nutrients are actually toxic for the plant, so it may not be in the right conditions to produce fruits, maybe some part of it related to this got damaged by the high amount of nutrients, or maybe it was just too much for the plant to produce fruits at that time, plants will some times defoliate (they will shed their leaves) and even shed their flowers when under stress, after all, they have to focus on survival over anything else, so it might be related.

3. Finally, the other cause I can think of, is that, when plants are stressed, like in this case, they are more prone to attacks by pests, like bacteria, fungi, even insects, and they are also more fragile, so they will probably suffer more than if they were healthy, and sickness will also do wacky things to plants, just like to our own bodies, it might prevent them from reproducing, damage organs (like flowers) and even lead to death. So it's a possibility, but in this case, unless you saw some signs of sickness, I would think is the least probable.

I'm really sorry if the answer was too long, but, because this was something external from the research topic (the plants dying without traits to be measured), I wanted to give you as complete an answer as possible without writing too much instead of hinting to possible causes for you guys to research, I hope I was clear and it was helpful, please do tell me if not or you want to know something else, I'm always glad to answer.

Great! As with people, and living things in general, excess of anything will be detrimental for it, as you are seeing with this experiment, when there are too many nutrients available for the plants, they don't thrive, they actually get damaged by this unbalance that's being applied to them. Thinking about how they get affected by the environment related to the genome, and measurable traits (what you guys are measuring in the plants) would be the next step. Do take into account, if you have 2 different sets of plants, ones with a lot of fertilizer and ones without it in excess, in the same proportions (the 9:3:3:1 ratio) comparing plants that are more similar to each other externally (what we would call the "phenotype") would be better in my opinion, it would allow you guys to better see the differences between treatments (lots of nutrients and normal amounts).

Also, I would be grateful if you guys could label the pictures so I get a better grasp at what I'm looking at :)

Nice! Do your plants also have little hair like things growing on their surface? If they do, maybe you could also measure that trait.

I like the prediction, comparing between treatments is a good way to understand what is happening in the experiment, and why is there variation between them, again, these questions can be expanded as you advance in the experiments.

Keeping a nice track of these ratios, environmental changes, and how you care for these plants is important too! Remember that for the experiment to be as successful as possible, caring for both groups in the exact same way (if possible) is really important :D.

Please feel free to share any findings here, and remember I'll gladly try to answer any questions you might get while doing the experiments or reading about this project.