Does Medicine Effect Plant Growth Report

Story of The Seed Lab September 7th 2017

Gabriel Adint, Elizabeth Ilagan, Steven Trujillo, Lauren Anderson

Abstract

In the expirement we tested giving medicine to the plants and trying to make them grow faster. We found that this was a fail and that it will decrease the growth of the plant.

Introduction

In our experiment We wanted to see if a drug like allergy medicine will slow down the growth rate of our cauliflower. We thought that if giving plants allergy medicine affected their growth, then plants given allergy medicine will grow more quickly. We had chosen Benadryl as allergy medicine to water with the plants. The main ingredients are made out of FD&C, glycyrrhizinate, poloxamer, purified sodium benzoate, sodium citrate, and Diphenhydramine HCI. The medicine helps you relax and fall asleep, that is why we thought that this medicine would have some good effect on plants. If we water plants with benadryl, then it will grow slower than plants that are watered regularly.

Materials 
Benadryl
Cauliflower seeds
Dirt
Water
Syringe

Methods and Procedures

Large syringe, 4 planters with the same soil, 80 cauliflower seeds, water, liquid benadryl

For our experiment we started with 80 cauliflower seeds, 20 in each planter. The seeds were separated into two different categories, a control that was just given water and a benadryl one that was given the same amount of water and 5 milliliters of benadryl. Each day we came in and gave each pot 20 milliliters of water and the two benadryl pots 5 mL of benadryl. After watering our plants we determined the germination rate and compared the two groups.

1. Plant 20 seeds in each pot
2. Water pots 20 mL each
3. Add 5 mL liquid benadryl to the two non control pots
4. Record germination rate and size
5. Water 20mL each plant and give 5mL benadryl to non control pots.
6. Wait till next day and repeat 4-5

Results

   



















As a result so far, our plants are doing fairly well. Both of the plants that we gave just water to are growing very nicely and seem healthy. As for our plants with benadryl one out of two of the plants has no growth or even signs of sprouting. The benadryl has a big affect on our plants. It shows that this type of medicine 

Discussion

In this experiment, our group is testing whether or not medicine would affect the germination of a plant. We had poured liquid benadryl in one plant which had 20 seeds of cauliflower in it. In the base plant, we had poured water on instead of benadryl or any type of medicine. Whenever we had come back from a few days or the next day, we had noticed that one of the benadryl plants hadn’t had grown. It did not sprout anything in the pot, but the other benadryl mixed plant had grown slightly. At first, we had decided that the benadryl mixed plant was the healthiest (the one had had grown at all, at least). When we had given another look at the base plants, one looked like it had been dying. This may have been because we had accidentally drowned it in water. The other base plant seemed to be healthy and growing progressively. Our hypothesis seems supported because one of our tested plants had not grown at all. We expected the plant to die from the medicine, or at least completely slow down the growth. We were not surprised when we found our results because we did research on the effects of benadryl and thought that the sleepiness side effect would slow growth rate.

Conclusion 

     We can conclude from our experiment that giving plants medicine does not make them grow faster. I In fact it made the plants grow slower and one of the 2 plants that we gave medicine did not grow at all during the whole experiment. Our conclusion is that you should not give plants medicine because it will slow or stop the growth.