Phosphorous Case Study

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Phosphorous is one of the three main nutrients essential in fruitful plant growth and is also a common component of many fertilizers used for commercial farming. Although many believe plants receive plenty of nutrients from what they absorb from the soil, this is not always the case; often, plants are growing in environments that lack sufficient nutrients, especially phosphorous (Mehrvarz et al. 2008). This has led to an increase in they buying of phosphorous based fertilizers to boost crop yield (Hammond et al. 2009).
Since the most main source of phosphorous is from phosphate rock, like many other natural resources, the supply will eventually near depletion (George et al. 2002). To combat the dwindling of phosphorous, it is essential to find …show more content…

Using a mortar and pestle to grind, 2 hole punches of the leaf were combined with 4 ml of 80% acetone. Special care was taken to ensure all acetone evaporated was replaced. The solution was then placed into a glass tube to centrifuge for five minutes at 3,000 rpm and 22 ֯C. 2ml of the resulting supernatant were transferred into another glass tube and were placed in a spectrophotometer to determine absorbance values at wavelengths 470 nm, 645 nm, 663nm, and 720 nm. This measurement was replicated 3 additional times for each treatment group. Between each wavelength, the spectrophotometer was blanked with 80% acetone to reduce background noise. The average stomatal density was collected by counting the number of stomata on four plants per treatment group. Using clear fingernail polish, an impression of the stomata on each leaf were made and taped to a slide with a 1mm by a 1mm grid which was then studied under a microscope to obtain the number of stomata per mm2.The average height of the plants was collected by measuring from the top of the soil to the tip of the leaf of eight plants per treatment group. All data collected was entered into excel and underwent a t-test to determine statistical …show more content…

The High stomatal density it the control and half phosphorous treatment groups was proven to be statistically insignificant while the low levels of stomatal density in the phosphorous deficient group was proven to be significant (Table 2). The phosphorous deficient treatment groups height was proven to be less than the half phosphorous treatment group and control groups heights and was also statistically significant (Table

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