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BIOA02 Formal Lab Report:
Investigating the Effects of Nutrients on Plant Growth
Most vascular plants invest large amounts of energy developing underground root systems to facilitate
the uptake of water and certain nutrients from the soil. Although water uptake is essential for vascular
land plants to maintain hydration to carry out photosynthesis, nutrients are also essential for plant
metabolism and structure.
Essential plant nutrients are often divided into two groups; macronutrients and micronutrients. There
are nine macronutrients; carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, calcium, sulfur,
and magnesium. They are considered macronutrients because plants require them in large quantities.
For example, three of these macronutrients, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, make up 96% of a plant’s
dry mass. Macronutrients are required to synthesize amino acids, nucleic acids, nucleotides,
coenzymes, phospholipids, and other essential molecules (see Table 27.1 in Morris (2019) for more
specific descriptions of macronutrients).
Micronutrients, which include chlorine, iron, boron, manganese, zinc, copper, molybdenum, and nickel,
are only required in trace amounts. However, they are still just as important to a plant’s health and
survival as the macronutrients. For example, although it would take almost 3000 potatoes to extract a
penny’s worth of copper, without any copper potato plants are sickly and do not produce normal tubers
(potatoes). Except for carbon and oxygen, nutrients are taken up by the roots of a plant and
transported by the xylem.
In this experiment you will investigate the effects of a number of different fertilizer treatments on plant
growth, measured in shoot length (mm). You will use winter wheat (Triticum aestivum) as your study
species. You will need to research why this species is a good model for this type of study and include
this justification in the introduction of your formal lab report.
The Formal Lab Report (FLR) is completed independently by all students.
The due date for the FLR is Friday March 5th, 2021 by 12:00pm EST. We will accept late reports up to 5
days late at a penalty of 10% of the grade of the report each day it is late (penalty is applied at 12:00pm
EST each day). The last day to submit is Wednesday March 10th by 12:00pm EST.
All FLRs will be checked using the plagiarism software TurnItIn. If your submission fail to register a
similarity score through TurnItIn, you will receive a zero for the report. All submissions will be rigorously
checked and any submissions deemed to be in violation of the University of Toronto’s Student Academic
Code for any academic offense will receive a penalty. Depending on the severity of the offense, that
penalty can range from a 0 for a particular section of the report, a 0 for the entire report or a formal
sanction on your academic transcript. Please avoid the temptation to share materials or copy ideas from
other sources, especially if you leave this report until the last minute.
Procedure
This semester introduces an interesting perspective for experimental research since you will not
have the opportunity to perform this research on your own. Instead, the course lab technician
will follow the protocol and treatments listed below to grow your experimental wheat plants
from seed. There will be a large update posted to Quercus outlining different and interesting
intervals explaining the process of setting up the seeds and creating the treatments, posting
photos of updates on the growth of the plants, and finishing up by outlining the process of
measuring the fully grown wheat plants and providing the data set to be used in the writing of
your formal lab report. If you have questions about the process, feel free to post them in the
relevant discussion thread on Quercus and the technician (or the BIO Help TA – see course
syllabus for contact information) will be able to answer them.
Experimental treatments:
Treatment 1: dechlorinated water only
Treatment 2: media containing a full nutrient complement (Complete Media or CM) (N, P, K, Ca,
Mg, Fe)
Treatment 3: media containing only nitrogen (N)
Treatment 4: media containing only phosphorus (P)
Treatment 5: media containing only potassium (K)
Treatment 6: media containing only calcium (Ca)
Treatment 7: media containing only magnesium (Mg)
Treatment 8: media containing only iron (Fe)
Planting the wheat seeds:
1. Cut one paper towel in half, fold in half and place on bottom of planting container.
2. Cut a layer of cotton to fit the bottom of container and place on top of the paper towel.
3. Take the other half of paper towel (from step one), fold in half and place on top of the cotton.
4. Add 30mL of your treatment solution to the paper towel/cotton layers and allow solution to
absorb into the layers.
5. Measure 10mL of wheat seeds using a graduated cylinder.
6. Evenly spread all seeds on the top of the moistened paper towel.
7. Cut another paper towel in half, fold in half and place on the top of the seeds to keep them
moist.
8. Add an additional 20mL of your treatment solution to your planting container, making sure
the entirety of the top layer of paper towel is sufficiently moistened.
9. Place container under light (natural spectrum fluorescent lights).
10. Plants will be grown and are able to measured 14 days after planting.
BIOA02H3 S Winter 2021
3
Instructions for measuring the fully grown wheat plants:
1. Make qualitative observations of the plants in each of the treatment groups and record
these observations in the designated spot in this document (found on page 6).
Qualitative observations will be taken from photos posted by the technician along with
some accompanying notes.
2. Carefully remove plants and planting medium from planting container.