Planting Science - Projects: Foundations of Genetics: Team Tomato
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Foundations of Genetics: Team Tomato

Project by group cmsmulcaheyspring2021

Explore I know what plants need to survive and how a lot of their cycles and systems work, as well as how they affect the environment around us by producing oxygen or fixating nitrogen with legumes. In class and through background research I have discovered some of the ways in which plants are affected by their environment and some of their genetic makeup and how that works. I don't have any questions about plants that interest me.
Research Question The question that we are trying to answer is what changing a variable will do to the plants. We must ask this because in the different cups we are preparing, we use more fertilizer in one and change some other random variable in another. This is to test what these changes will do to the plant.
Predictions I predict that adding more fertilizer will increase the growth rate and health of the plants. It is already a proven fact that fertilizer helps plant growth and help, so as long as it's not too much, adding more fertilizer should help the plants even further.
Experimental Design 1. Cut a plastic bottle in half (roughly) 2. Poke a hole in the cap of the bottle 3. Cut a piece of string and thread it through the hole (this will allow the plants to take in water) 4. Fill the top part (upside-down with the cap on) with a layer of vermiculite and then a layer of soil 5. Place fertilizer in the soil using the stencil, then put another layer of vermiculite, then spray with water 6. Fill the bottom part of the bottle with water, then put fertilizer in the water (this is the independent variable for this bottle) 7. Place the top part of the bottle in the bottom part so that the string is submerged in the water 8. Place inside Light Box to grow, observe data
Conclusion Are traits affected by environment? Yes, they can be affected by their environment. If an organism needs to change in order to better suit the environment, or give it a better chance of survival, then chances are that it could change. If it needs a way to get food, then it might be able to learn, or it could evolve over time in order to achieve what it needs. The behavior could also change based on environment. What are possible explanations for our results? Our plants didn’t grow at the same speed, and there are parts where some of them might have died, which could cause inconsistencies. Not to mention that plants could get mixed up. The Bottle B grew the most, which had double fertilizer, this means that with the added fertilizer, it managed to increase the growth of the plants because they have more nutrients. How do the data we collected and our reasoning with scientific ideas support our claim? My claim was that environment can affect the growth of our plants and it definitely did. There were some of our plants that might not have received water as much as others, which would influence. Plus in Bottle C, the last one, some of the plants died and a few more in the other bottles got a bit broken, meaning that it changed our data in the end. Some of the plants might have wilted as well, or not have received enough light. All of these changes would sway our results. With all the data we collected it supports my claim because some of the resulting growth was affected by the environment. What future experiments could be done to expand on the results of this experiment? We could do experiments with absolute precision while handling the plants and making sure everything they had was exactly the same. Then we could see how that environment affected them. We could also do an experiment to further prove our hypothesis, which was already confirmed in this experiment. We could add even more fertilizer, or less, to see if our hypothesis would still remain true.
Investigation Theme BRASSICA
Grade Level High School Students (Grades 9,10,11,12)
Teacher Name Brian Mulcahey
School Name Catholic Memorial School
Session Spring 2021

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NSF_Logo.jpg This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant #2010556 and #1502892. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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