After the last couple of months working on our project, here is a brief overview of our results, compiled by Georgia. More comprehensive results to be posted soon!
Did VCL support plant growth?
YES!
Treatment with VCL increased stem and leaf development as well as root development for both soybean and lettuce plants. It resulted in increased plant height of the lettuce but did not increase the plant height of soybeans.
How effective was VCL?
VCL was significantly more effective in supporting plant growth than the controls, however it was less effective than treatment with Aquasol
Are the benefits of VCL due to its chemical composition or its microbial activity?
Both autoclaved leachate and normal leachate resulted in similar plant growth. This means that the study found the benefits of VCL are primarily due to its chemical composition, rather than microbial activity.
This is a surprising result as microbial activity is known to be crucial in supporting plant growth. Possible explanations why our experiment did not demonstrate this is as we used sand as the growth medium, its poor structure and lack of biological activity may not have provided an environment that would benefit from microbial activity. Also, the short timeframe of our study may have not been sufficient to demonstrate a significant benefit of microbial activity for plant growth.
Was there any differences between plants treated with the normal leachate and the autoclaved leachate?
Plants treated with the autoclaved leachate resulted in slightly greater above ground weights than the normal leachate. This may have occurred because sterilisation can increase the bioavailability of micronutrients and hence increase plant growth.
Also, plants treated with normal leachate resulted in a greater total fresh weight than plants treated with autoclaved leachate. This indicates that microbial activity may support plant growth that has better water uptake and water holding capacity.
No comments:
Post a Comment