Blog Updates
Trippy Results: Update #4
1/31/20
Welcome back to the next episode of our clover-growing, bacteria-toting, strictly-scientific adventure! We have just finished our experiment in the field of natural fertilizer and white clover. While white clover is all that and a bag of chips, we wanted to improve how the crop could help recover spent soil even better with more affordable, do-it-yourself treatments than what industry giants use. Oh, snap! Did we find some results... We have arrived in a new decade, the 2020s, and yet we want to look back to the radical 90s. The experiment has been completed, and the team has started to prepare for presentations and competitions at local and state-wide(!) competitions. In order to prepare, though, we still need to recollect the hazy memories of our experiments and the data that they produced. Looking for a little bit of a nostalgia hit yourself? Take a look at our selection of Dr. Dre to the right, and you'll be transported right back to the high point of the 20th century...
When the dust settled and the smoke cleared from the classic rock of the 80s, there was 90s hip-hop. Smooth lyrics with hot beats, these songs were the dopamine hit that teenagers needed in an age of globalization and the wacky worldwide web. Like 90s rap, and not unlike fine wine, our results have only improved with time.
Let's throw it back to when our research first began to bud. To be blunt, we are working to find a more natural fertilizer. During crop rotations, farmers often use rest crops, like legumes (clover and beans) that have a symbiotic relationship with colonies of bacteria, to replenish desertified soil with nutrients. In order to better facilitate this relationship, the bacteria and legume seeds are often mixed together using a sticky liquid or gel, in a process known as inoculation. However, commercial forms of these sticky treatments are generally expensive. In areas where low-nutrient soil exists, there are often many mouths to feed and little money to go into fixing the soil quality, so less costly inoculation methods are necessary. We are testing different treatments of inoculation on clover, which can be measured by the number of colonies of bacteria (nodules) that develop on the roots.
To help the development of nodules on our green clover, we used Coca-cola, glue, orange juice, corn syrup, and water as separate treatments, with commercial gum Arabic as a positive control. Each treatment was mixed with clover seeds and an inoculation powder containing bacteria, then was planted and grown for 51 days. The plants were then uprooted and analyzed, and nodules were counted on six of the 30 plants that were in each trial, as well as six controls that were grown alongside each trial. The biomass of the analyzed roots were then measured after drying out overnight. The assays done to measure the effects of the various treatments left us huffin' and puffin', but we were able to wrap up experimental trials prior to Christmas.
Now that we have all of our data collected, we can interpret what it means. To do this, we transferred our nodule count and biomass data from our lab notebook to a Google spreadsheet (found below). On the "RAW DATA" page, each trial is organized into columns of plant number, nodule count, and biomass. Each trial has six rows of experimental plants and six rows of control plants, along with averages and standard deviations (how spread out the data is) for those measurements. All the trials had more nodules than their controls, demonstrating that inoculation results in more nodulation than doing nothing, as we expected. In a sample size that is greater than 30, the z-score, or an analysis of how spread out the data is compared to another data set, how far out the data was. However, as made apparent by the data sheet below this text, each treatment only produced 6 data points and 6 negative control data points. This means that the data cannot be assumed to have a "normal," wacky distribution. A t-test, therefore, can measure the probability of a data set being significant with a small sample size. If one peers into the data sheets (Figure 1) below in the "T-Test" category, the crib says that the "p-value" produced from the t-test must be less than 0.05 to be "statistically significant. Word, the only treatments that had significant results were Coca-Cola and gum Arabic. This means both of these treatments significantly improved nodulation from their respective negative controls (no inoculant or treatment). Between the two treatments, another t-test indicated that neither treatment had a significant enough advantage in nodulation.
With these results, a cost analysis seemed necessary to make a preliminary recommendation as to what treatment made sense fiscally. For one acre, assuming that seed and bacteria costs remain constant, Coca-Cola costs $1.80 per acre, while gum Arabic costs $93.65 per acre. No duh, the obvious choice based on a small sample size is Coca-Cola as an inoculant treatment.
Although we've been focusing on the past, with analyzing the results of the work done over the last few months and taking a trip to the 90s, there's also important events coming up in the future. The work we'll do for 20s, for the 2020s that is, will revolve around presenting our results. We plan to head to the Denver Metro Regional Science and Engineering Fair to explain our joint efforts as a research team and present our project. In preparation for the science fair, we need to make a poster, and are currently in the preliminary stages of its design. In addition to the poster, we will publish a journal article during this time.
To roll it all up, we have completed our procedures, collected and analyzed our data, and are preparing for presenting our research. We can always look back to the good ol' days, where Bill Clinton was president and the World Trade Organization represented globalization. At least Snoop Dogg will always be there for us... (peep the rad video below)
Biotech BARS.mov