Competition of Brassica Rapa
Scientific Thought-SCI 1401
8/7/11
Introduction According to Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in his Principles of Biology (1864), the survival of the fittest is the struggle for life. The ability of plants to grow, flower, reproduce and ultimately survive while sharing limited available resources is a natural struggle at best. Brassica rapa is a highly diverse, rapid-cycling group of crop plants that have been used for research in genetics and hands on learning in the classroom (Williams and Curtis, 1986).
Germination and establishment of Brassica rapa is critical in the life of the plant as this is when the seeds are most vulnerable to injury, disease, and water stress. (Raven et al. 2005) Intraspecific competition occurs in the Brassica rapa when the same species vie for the same resources in an ecosystem. By minimizing outside variances, then there would be a difference between the two treatments of Brassica rapa in terms of plant population in response to the competition for resources. In this study, the growth of Brassica rapa was monitored on a weekly basis to determine if intraspecific competition would influence growth rate and survival. It is expected that the larger population would experience the most competition and thus have better fitness than a population with less intraspecific competition (Solomon et al 2002). In our study, we will back up this hypothesis that the larger population would experience more competition thus give us that clear end result.
Methods
The Brassica rapa used in this experiment was developed by pathologist from the University of Wisconsin to be a fast plant widely cultivated as a leaf vegetable, a root vegetable, and an oil seed it has the ability to grow from seed to plant within six weeks. Two uniformed habitats were created in separate 10.16 cm pots, with equal amounts of soil and fertilizer. The two treatments differ only in density, (1) low density of 2 seeds/pot; and (2) High density of 10
8/7/11
Introduction According to Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in his Principles of Biology (1864), the survival of the fittest is the struggle for life. The ability of plants to grow, flower, reproduce and ultimately survive while sharing limited available resources is a natural struggle at best. Brassica rapa is a highly diverse, rapid-cycling group of crop plants that have been used for research in genetics and hands on learning in the classroom (Williams and Curtis, 1986).
Germination and establishment of Brassica rapa is critical in the life of the plant as this is when the seeds are most vulnerable to injury, disease, and water stress. (Raven et al. 2005) Intraspecific competition occurs in the Brassica rapa when the same species vie for the same resources in an ecosystem. By minimizing outside variances, then there would be a difference between the two treatments of Brassica rapa in terms of plant population in response to the competition for resources. In this study, the growth of Brassica rapa was monitored on a weekly basis to determine if intraspecific competition would influence growth rate and survival. It is expected that the larger population would experience the most competition and thus have better fitness than a population with less intraspecific competition (Solomon et al 2002). In our study, we will back up this hypothesis that the larger population would experience more competition thus give us that clear end result.
Methods
The Brassica rapa used in this experiment was developed by pathologist from the University of Wisconsin to be a fast plant widely cultivated as a leaf vegetable, a root vegetable, and an oil seed it has the ability to grow from seed to plant within six weeks. Two uniformed habitats were created in separate 10.16 cm pots, with equal amounts of soil and fertilizer. The two treatments differ only in density, (1) low density of 2 seeds/pot; and (2) High density of 10