The Importance Of Plant Germination

“Germination is a process in which a seed or spore awakens from dormancy and starts to sprout” (WiseGEEK). Plant germination can definitely vary if it is grown in different conditions, but I am investigating how plant germination will be impacted by the presence of other plants. I predicted that broccoli will have a positive impact on germination of lettuce seeds. To do this, I had two groups an experimental group and a control group. Both groups were provided with similar temperature, sunlight and water. I took a petri dish and added an equal amount of water through a pipette in each dish .Then placed a filter paper cut accordingly as a replacement of soil. Secondly, I placed a small piece of broccoli on top of aluminum foil in the center

I left my experiment for a week with similar environmental conditions for both groups; I saw a similarity and a few differences after the experiment was carried out. Both groups had 21 seeds germinated out of 25. On the other hand broccoli in the experimental group was molded, while the control group did not have any signs of it being molded. I decided to measure the length of 5 stems from each group and take its average, so that the experiment would provide more accuracy. The experiment group had much longer stems for lettuce seeds. The length of the stems, of 5 lettuce seeds for the experimental group are (4.5cm, 3.2 cm, 5.1cm, 3.6cm and 4 cm). The average for this group was 4.08cm. While the measurement for the stems of 5 lettuce seeds of the control group are (1.95cm, 1.75cm, 2.25cm, 1.81cm and 1.75 cm), its average adds up to 1.902. When the length and average of both groups is compared, experimental group clearly out numbers control group because the stems for that group are much longer. I also compared the color of leaves for each group. Since, the experiment was just practiced for a week the leaves were not so many, but the leaves in experiment group were slightly brighter than the control group. All the differences clearly show how much hypothesis was true because lettuce seeds germinated better in the presence of

Which includes the color of leaf being darker for the experimental group, but not for the control group. Something which we did not expect I the broccoli being molded, that was probably due to some error that might have happened during designing the experiment. My results were very positive and I accepted out hypothesis because the presence of broccoli enhanced the growth for the lettuce seeds. In my opinion, I might have done a few errors while working on my experiment because my broccoli was molded. For the future I would recommend to be more accurate and make 2 or 3 control and experiment groups because this will allow an individual to be more precise with better out coming results. What I feel I also did wrong was that the filter paper for control group was not covering the entire petri dish which may have affected the stem growth. A few lettuce seeds were not on top of filter paper; therefore they received less water than the others. To improve the results, make sure to tape the entire petri dish carefully because if the dish is not tightly covered their might be a chance for bacteria or any other thing to enter and effect your experiment