Fast Plant Reflection!

During this last quarter of Biochem 2. Our class has been observing fast plants (F1) and their fast plant offspring (F2). At the beginning of this quarter, we grew 5 different types of fast plants. My group chose to have; (ST)Standard Purple Stem Hairy, (NP)Non-Purple Stem, (YG)Yellow-Green Leaf, and (NG)Non-Purple stem yellow-green leaf with our surprise plant Type “B” that's purple and green. These plants took us about 3-4 weeks to grow before they were ready to be pollinated. Once they were all pollinated with the “B’ seed, they sprouted about 2 and a half months after. Sadly, our F2 plants were not successful since we didn’t look after them as much. Only 2 of the 4 plots had seedling germination, but it didn’t last more than two weeks before it shriveled up and died. Though before they died we saw that the sprout was a purple steam, which came from the (B F1)plant. In this mini project, we found that the F1 plants grew a lot faster than the F2 plants and that they were all able to reproduce a small amount. Some of the factors that could have hindered our F2 plant growth might be water consumption. One reason for this could have been because every time we checked the plant it would be dry so we would add extra water. In the parental plant, each plot was moist and hardly dry, but in the F2 plants, the plots were almost always dry. Another factor that could have negatively affected their growth could have been the amount of light they received. The F1 plants were under the constant light while the F2 plants had a timer that only gave them about 6-7 hours of light each day. Something that stood out to me in this mini-project was my ability to care for the F1 plants. This was an interesting experience because I have never learned the process of planting or reproduction so while doing this benchmark I was also learning something completely new. I learned that the F1 plants were able to survive long enough to reproduce and make the second generation. Even with the F1 plants turning out good, I realized that this is always not the case. With the F2 plants, you see that it was not the same and that it was only half the success. As you continue to plant seeds from each generation the outcome will be different/varied.