The Effects of Salinity on Plants
Background:
We know that salinity can affect the growth of plants. When the salt in the solution and the plant’s roots is made equal, plants cannot use osmosis to transfer nutrients. From Science 10, we already know that plants move water down the concentration gradient when dealing with low and high concentrations of salt. However when they absorb the large amounts of sodium and chloride, that’s when the adverse effects start showing on the plant. Also when the surrounding solution is hypertonic to the roots of the plant,turgor pressure will be directly affected and photosynthesis will occur less often due to the stomata being closed. We must find out why sodium chloride is dangerous to plants. We have found most of our information on science websites and in the Campbell Reece Biology AP textbook.
Objective/ Problem:
In our experiment we were trying to understand the effects of salinity on the growth and health of a plant. The question we were asking is “ How plant growth is affected by salinity levels”, and we were also trying to determine the effects that salt has on the plants ability to take in water.
Hypothesis:
We predict that when salt is added to the water solution in a large enough concentration, plant growth will be stunted since the water potential of the surrounding solution would be lower than that of the potential within the plant and would thus prevent diffusion from occurring and would decrease the plants water intake. We predict that as the salt concentration increases the plants will take in less and less water and , the plants themselves will become shorter.
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Materials:
Transparent plastic pot (3) Ruler
Fertilizer spikes (3) Thermometer
Water Plants seeds (3)
Salt
Experimental design: All of our plants were placed in the same room with the same amount of light, nutrients and water. We put our plants in a water solution and then gave each of our plants a different amount of salt within their solution. One plant had no salt, another had 10 mg of salt and the third had 15 mg of salt. We monitored and recorded data from the plants on a weekly basis. We let all 3 plants grow over 5 weeks as well. We used slow-release fertilizer spikes to provide nutrients to the plants. We measured the amount of water absorption by seeing how much the water levels inside the transparent pot which held the plant had gone down.
Procedure:
1. Fill pot with 250ml of room temperature water
2. Insert one seed in each pot.
3. Insert one fertilizer spike in each plant
4. Take 2 of the 3 plants and give them 10 mg of salt and 15 mg of salt respectively
5. At the end of each week, measure water levels and plant height as well as record any observations
6. Make sure to the water levels are filled back to 250 ml each week.
Data:
Plant 1 (no salt)
Time | Water level test 1 (ml) | Water level Test 2 (ml) |
1 | 40 | 36 |
2 | 46 | 47 |
3 | 52 | 55 |
4 | 59 | 58 |
5 | 61 | 63 |
Time | Plant Height Test 1 (mm) | Plant Height Test 2 (mm) |
1 | 12 | 10 |
2 | 17 | 15 |
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3 | 22 | 24 |
4 | 30 | 29 |
5 | 45 | 33 |
Plant 2: (10 mg of salt)
Time | Water level Test 1 (ml) | Water level test 2 (ml) |
1 | 9 | 11 |
2 | 20 | 8 |
3 | 17 | 14 |
4 | 12 | 10 |
5 | 7 | 9 |
Time | Plant Height Test 1 (mm) | Plant Height Test 2 (mm) |
1 | 9 | 11 |
2 | 13 | 15 |
3 | 16 | 16 |
4 | 20 | 19 |
5 | 26 | 21 |
Plant 3 (15 mg of salt)
Time | Water level Test 1 (ml) | Water level Test 2 (ml) |
1 | 8 | 11 |
2 | 24 | 19 |
3 | 15 | 16 |
4 | 17 | 25 |
5 | 19 | 20 |
Time | Plant Height Test 1 (mm) | Plant Height Test 2 (mm) |
1 | 8 | 7 |
2 | 12 | 13 |
3 | 17 | 15 |
4 | 19 | 18 |
5 | 22 | 23 |
Analysis:
The plants with the salt, absorbed considerably less water than that of the plant in the solution with no salt. The average amount of water that plant 1 was taking in was 51.4ml, compared with the other two plants which were 11.6 and 17 ml, this shows that the salt directly impacted the amount of water that the plants were taking in. Plant 1s average height was at least 6 mm taller compared to the other 2 plants average which further proves that the salt affected the health and growth of the plant.
Conclusion:
After conducting our experiment our group agrees that the data we have acquired, supports our hypothesis. Our hypothesis stated that the plants with a salty solution would be less likely to grow as well, as a plant without a salty solution and that the salty solution plant’s ability to take in water would be negatively affected. The data we collected shows that the plants grown without salt on average were taller than the plants grown with salt, which supports our prediction. Also the plants with the salty solution absorbed less water than that of the the plants without the salty solution, further supporting our idea that diffusion within the roots would be affected as a result of the hypertonic solution caused by the addition of salt. These are shown by the graphs we formed from our results **Refer to appendixes, A, B, C, D**
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Overall, our group believes that the results of our experiment are valid and that, despite minor flaws within our experimental design and testing, our data was still unaffected enough by errors to be a valuable source of information. A flaw of the experiment is that the height we recorded isn’t just a result of the salt, genetics would also play a factor, and it is possible that plant one was only taller because of its genes, however we did conduct two trials to help prevent this from interfering with our results. In the future we could try to use seeds all from the same parent plants to help reduce the variation, or we could even try to get a plant that reproduces asexually, and get 3 identical plants. Also the amount of salt we used between plants 2 and 3 were very close (10,15 mg), in the future we should try getting higher and lower, and have a wider range of concentrations, for example using 5 mg, 10 mg, 15 mg, 20 mg, 25 mg, and 30 mg instead so that we have a more clear idea on how salt concentration affects the plants. This experiment accurately tested the major points of our hypothesis, it showed that salt affects both the growth and water intake of a plant, and gave us information that supports our claim.The purpose of our control was to allow all our plants to have equal conditions so that salt was the only one that would cause the difference in size and water intake. The purpose of our control was to show what a plant would look like without any salt added and gave us a baseline to compare the other plants with. For the most part our control did work, as it was an excellent baseline and it really did help highlight the effects of a salt on a plant. Based on the results, we had and on our standard deviation graphs , our results appear to be fairly significant.
Although we did test the effect of salinity on height and water intake, we did not test its effect on turgor pressure and how it impacts a plant’s rate of photosynthesis. This is a question that needs to be answered to determine how exactly salt impacts the overall health of a plant, as photosynthesis is a crucial part of plant life. Another question that needs to be answered is exactly why a plant is stunted in growth, we can infer that because a plant does not have enough water, it would have a decreased turgor pressure, effecting a plants ability to obtain energy. and would not have the water to perform other essential tasks, but we didn’t really test these and our experiment couldn’t prove them either. Our experiment is relevant ,as some water and soil may have a high concentration of salt and could negatively affect agriculture. Research and experiments on the effects of salinity on plants can help farmers come up with strategies for coping with salty soil, and can help shed light on adaptations that help plants cope with a salty environment. This information can also be compared with salinity tests on oceanic plants to help understand how they survive, and can also help us understand the effects of salt on our cells as well.
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Appendix A
Appendix B Appendix C.
Appendix D.
References
http://www.ehow.com/info_7795474_effects-saline-solution-plant-growth.html (Marion Sipe, no date availble )
http://www.sebiology.org/publications/Bulletin/July05/salinity.html (Hannik,2005)
http://www.ehow.com/about_5489860_effects-salt-water-plants.html (Thibodeaux,2014)
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/agdex3303 (Agdex , Alberta Gov, 2001)
http://appslabs.com.au/salinity.htm (Apps Laboratories)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147651304000922
(Asish Kumar Parida and Anath Bandhu Das, 2004)
Läuchli and Pitman,2002)
http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/87/3/547.short
(Cheeseman, 1988)
Textbook: Campbell Reece Biology AP, 7th Edition
