Posted: May 6th, 2015

Methods

Methods
1.    Collect your group’s plants – you should have 6 pots per group planted at densities of either 1,2,4,8,16,32 plants/pot
2.    Get a tray and put some tap water in it
3.    Carefully, wash out the roots in water, while the whole plant is intact
4.    Separate the: root from the hypocotyl from the leaves
5.    Count the number of plants per pot and record this
6.    For each pot weigh the total root weight, total shoot weight, total hypocotyls weight and record in excel table
7.    Calculate mean weight ( of shoots or roots or hypocotyls) per plant, by dividing your weights by number of plants
8.    Finally, put all the contents of each pot into one bag and send to the oven – label bag with your group name and plant density. There should be 6 bags. Put all six bags inside another bag to keep them together. Another group will measure these dried plant parts or the technicians will, and the data supplied to you for analysis. Draw some graphs of the data and evaluate the relationship between growth of the individual plant and sowing density
To write up this reports
1.    Introduction : One paragraph with background information, some academic references, and aim to test the hypothesis
2.    Method : a few sentences describing the methods
3.    Results: a table of your own data on mean fresh weight per plant of (i) shoots, (ii) hypocotyls and (iii) roots and class data on mean dry weights per plant ; some graphs of the above results
4.    Discuss: if results support or refute the hypothesis with some explanation
5.    Refer to any reading on intraspecific competition
6.    Also include analysis of data from SPSS