The Experiment Of Plant Growth

Introduction

The The research we conducted for this semester was a way for us to put what we have learned in lecture/labs to physically seeing a plant go through those stages. With seeing a seed grow into a full plant really shows that the slightest thing can be off and a plant will either have a positive or a negative action towards it. The plants are going to have a tough time growing due to being at 2 inches rather than an inch but they will just take a little longer to grow. Also looking at the soil it looks to be as if it has been left out and all dried up which could really affect the growth of the plants due to having less nutrients as compared to a new thing of soil.

With being able to identify the parts/roles for a plant we were then able to physically watch these plants go from a seed to a full grown plant. With having to plant seeds deeper this will take the seed much longer to germinate, which could be bad due to the weather constantly changing and even pest coming out. The flower looks like it will end up dying due to using an older seed.

Cotton

Cotton is apart of the Malvaceae Family or also know as hibiscus or the mallow family. The scientific name for cotton is Gossypium Hirsutum, another fact about cotton is that its the worlds biggest non-food crop. When cotton you stretch cotton they turn into long carbon fibers which are then spun into paper,rope,sheets,coffee filters and even fishing nets. Crushed cotton seeds are useful in vegetable oil, cattle feed and organic fertilizer. The cotton that we use is made from the seed fibres of the plant, which are up to 2.5 inches long and have evolved to help the plant disperse its seeds. It has survived competition from synthetics but at the expense of heavy fertilizer and pesticide use and it’s shocking history of labor exploitation..The thing about cotton is that no one is really sure how old cotton is or where it exactly where cotton came from. But with artifacts we were able to find bits a pieces of cotton in a cave in Mexico that could be at least 7,000 years old, but some of the first evidence of cotton goes to the 3,000 B.C., where cotton was being spun and woven into clothing by the people of the Indus River Valley in Pakistan. Cotton was known throughout the world by the 1500’s. Just like in Europe, Arab merchants introduced cotton sometime during the 800 A.D..The first modern mechanical cotton gin was created by American inventor Eli Whitney in 1793 and patented in 1794. The gin, short for engine, could do the work 10 times faster than by hand. The gin made it possible to supply large quantities of cotton fiber to the fast-growing textile industry. With technology and research we are able to grow cotton all across the southern half of the United States like Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia . There has been many studies done on the best temperature to grow cotton in and the average is eighty degrees fahrenheit, and fifty degrees fahrenheit is what it has to be in order for cotton not to grow.

Corn

Corn scientifically known as Zea Mays is apart of the Gramineae family, or in other words the grass family. Corn originally came from a wild grass that grows in mexico that they call teosinte. This domesticated crop is one of the world's most distributed crop, that crop is used in many things such as feed,biofuel and even just food that we eat. Corn is a crop that is used the majority of the time for teaching such as genetics, physiology, soil fertility and biochemistry. Corn is a huge part of the Latin American culture by being used in various types of food dishes to even dough for tortillas.Corn is also used to produce ethanol, a first generation liquid biofuel that came out in 1826, but in 1876, Nicolaus Otto, the inventor of the modern four-cycle internal combustion engine, used ethanol to power an early engine. Corn is possibly one of the most domesticated field crops, which corn was founded by native people in Mexico about 10,000 years ago . In just a couple years corn fled through many countries such as France,Italy and even the northern part of Africa. In the United States we have states such as Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas and lastly Iowa which end up making 40% of the worlds corn. Also the best temperature produces the best growth for corn is around eighty-nine degrees Fahrenheit, and does not grow in any temperature less than fifty degrees Fahrenheit. The base temperature commonly is fifty degrees Fahrenheit.

Sorghum

The scientific name for sorghum is Sorghum Bicolor, it is a part of the Gramineae Family also known as the grass family. There are multiple uses for sorghum, but sorghum grain is primarily used for livestock feed and ethanol production, but (demand is increasing in the food industry) is becoming in demand in the consumer food industry. One- third or approximately 120 millions bushels in the United States is comprised of Sorghum crop, Sorghum is used for renewable fuel production that is a cleaner burning octane fuel. Due to sorghums wide uses and adaptation, “sorghum is one of the really indispensable crops” required for the survival of humankind. We found that sorghum is domestic in Northeastern Africa which over a period of time it began to spread through Africa quickly. With Africa having many different environments in its country the sorghum had to quickly adapt to the different types (environments?) in order to survive. The first known record of sorghum in the United States comes from Ben Franklin in 1757 who wrote about its application in producing brooms. The Sorghum belt is where the most sorghum is grown in the United States, which includes Kansas, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Colorado. Sorghum is a crop that is primarily grown on dry land but with an average of twenty inches of rain during its growing season which is between May 15th and early June. The thing about sorghum its grows best when its about ninety-eight degrees but when it gets below fifty degrees this crop will not last.

Zinnia

The Scientific name for Zinnia is Zinnia elegans which is the most familiar species, originally from the warm regions of Mexico being a warm–hot climate plant. Its leaves are lance-shaped and sandpapery in texture, and height ranges from 15 cm to 1 meter. Zinnias are annuals flowers so they grow for one season and don't come back in subsequent years. They have a daisy like look to them that disperse from a single stem.These flowers come in all different sizes and looks, from a single row of petals, to the dome shaped variety. Hardy plants, Zinnias have erect stems that bear opposite leaves and terminal flower heads. The Zinnia species with small, orange flowers is Zinnia augustifolia, while the species with red, purple, or yellow petals is Zinnia peruviana.With having these bright colors they attract many types of butterflies (Zinnia | The Flower Expert - Flowers Encyclopedia).

Methods and Materials

The protocol used for this experiment was to plant the seeds given and grow them and observe the plants growth throughout the 11 weeks of research. The materials used for this experiment were black plastic flower pots, potting soil, paper towels, a ruler, and the seeds given. We planted corn with a variety number of- DKC 66-42 at 2 inches in depth in the soil, sorghum with a variety number of- MMR- 38-73 at 2 inches in depth in the soil, cotton with a variety number of- PHY-499 at 2 inches in depth, One flower pot went to each plant and in each pot we planted three seeds of each in the pots. The significance for planting three seeds per pot was to allow us to have a higher percentage of germination, because in case if one or two seeds didn’t germinate we would still have one seed that we would be able to observe throughout the 11 weeks. The potting soil was simulated to be the soil that the plants would normally be planted in, minus the specific nutrients that the potting soil is lacking for the plants to grow.

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Observations

The first 2 weeks we had trouble getting the seeds germinated and out of the soil due to planting 2 inches rather than 1 inch. But as we got into week 3 we had to replant our zinnia flower due to having old seeds that didn't want to sprout due to being left out in the weather. But as we got everything back on track by adding Peters Professional 20-10-20 we saw a huge increase on plant growth until we got to week 5 the corn plant was basically dead due to overwatering. But after the replanting of the corn we were able to get newer and fresher solid which allowed for better nutrients and healthier plants.

Final Results

Corn

We planted a PHY-449 at a soil depth of 2 inches, as you can tell from week 1 to week 2 there was zero growth.But as by week 3 came it jumped to 17 inches, this could have been due to our seed being planted at 2 inches which the deeper it is the harder it is for the plant to emerge from the soil. The reason there was such a jump from week 3 to 4 was due to the TA putting in Peters Professional 20-10-20 so with extra nutrients added to the soil there was an increase in growth. After a great growth with the added nutrients we as a group might have watered too much and drowned the plant. In week 5 we replanted corn and at the end of week 7 we had it at 2.75 inches.

Sorghum

We planted MMR- 38-73 at 2 inches deep, but as from the other plants this was the only one to germinate at week 2 due to a sorghum already being covered in a powder which allows the seed to be immune to diseases already which makes the seed more mature than other plants. But from week 3 to 4 we can see that the fertilizer really helped the sorghum with a 14.75 inch increase. But as we go from week 5-7 we see that there is a constant in the growth which would have to be with the weather and the little watering we were doing as a group.

Zinnia

Zinnia We planted Zinnia at 2 inches deep, as you can tell from week 1 to 2 there was no growth at all. In week 3 we found out from the TA that the seeds we were using were old left out seeds from last year so we then had to replant our flower. As we got to week 4 there was growth coming from the flower due to having a good seed and receiving the fertilizer we were able to get some growth. But as we can tell from the last 3 weeks there was only little growth due to the weather changing from hot and cold.

Cotton

We planted three DKC 6642 cotton seeds at 2 inches deep.By week two there was still no growth but as we got into week 3 there was some germination. As we got into the fertilizer week there was an increase in growth due to the cotton finally getting some extra nutrients. As we can see from weeks 4 to 7 there was a steady growth, and during these times there was less watering going on and the weather was going from 40 to 70 degrees which has an impact on the plants.

Discussion

Throughout this 11 week experiment, we saw how plants can be affected from overwatering to even having old seeds. But as an overall planting our seeds at 2 inches was wrong and should have been planted at only 1 inch if not a half inch. But as time went on we saw the plants being affected from the temperature to even the amount of water they received to lastly the soil.We as a group watered the plants too much and we had some bad luck with the soil,fertilizer and lastly the flower seeds. But for the most part I was pretty accurate on the solid not looking very rich and new and it having an effect on the plants. And lastly planting our seeds at 2 inches deep really had a big impact on the plant because it took much longer for the seed to germinate that's why our plants looked smaller and having to replant to of our crops we had one of the smaller plants in lab.