1. By Jamie King, James Needham, Curtis Williams, Sam Parsons and Saul Ashbridge. Professional Economics & Science Team

2. Introduction:  How different concentrations of fertilisers affect plant growth and crop yield.  Why is nitrogen important in plant growth.  Comparison of commercial fertilizers with in-house prepared fertilizer.

3. Aims:  Research the effect of nitrogen on plant life and growth.  Educate farmers about the commercial use of nitrogen fertilizers.  Investigate the feasibility of producing in- house fertilizers.  Educate the people on how to use these findings and methods to help feed the world.  Primarily, Feed The World!

4. Preparations:  Plant type used.  Quantity of plants used.  Experimental test conditions.  Measurement of fertilizer performance.  Timescale of data collection and data display.  Fertilizer concentrations investigated.

5. Method 1 – Commercial Fertilizers  Grow broad bean plants for 2-3 weeks.  Select the three most similar plants from crop produced.  Add different concentrations of nitrogen to two of the plants, and distilled water to the other.  Leave the plants to grow for 2-3 weeks, topping them up with water when required.  Measure plant height every five days.

6. Method 2 – In house prepared fertilizers  1M ammonia solution was titrated with 1M nitric acid to yield an 8% ammonium nitrate solution.  This solution was split into three portions.  Two portions were diluted to yield 4% and 2% solutions.  These solutions were tested on broad bean plants as described in method 1.

7. The Results – Method 1 This graph shows the final height of each plant, the 4% Nitrogen fertiliser and the 6% Nitrogen fertiliser didn’t produce results as they had died. Height of plant in mm Time in weeks

8. The Results – Method 2 After 3 days of growth in the three concentrations of the in-house prepared fertilizers the experiments were deemed complete due to all three plants dying.

9. Conclusions:  Fertilizer concentration is important when optimizing plant growth.  Distilled water alone can help plant growth, however growth is stunted.  The use of a soil free medium may have a negative effect on plant growth.

10. Evaluation:  What would we change?  Investigate the use of a soil substitute as a growth medium.  The use of a wider range of fertilizer concentrations.  We would take more frequent recordings.

11. By Saul Ashbridge, Jamie King, James Needham, Sam Parsons, Curtis Williams. Professional Economics & Science Team