Aloha,
My partner Yash and I have been assigned a phenotyping project. Phenotypes are the physical characteristics of plants. One such characteristic is growth rate. The professor’s goal is to understand how plants’ growth rate changes based on environment. This is possible because Hawaii has a large range of climates from one side of the island to another.
Last week, we completed a box designed to streamline collection of rate of growth data. This box takes images of plants to be later processed. The image processing turns all the green of the image into an area. This overtime is our rate of growth.
This week we began data collection in the rainy field. This field is called Waimanalo field. We also planted in a dry field but most of the seeds were taken out of the earth by birds so we couldn’t do much data collection there.
We have imaged the plants for six days. Due to variation and constraints of the box and our co-workers, only two of the eighteen rows were imaged everyday. Regardless, we have collected a surplus of images to analyze. The inconsistent imaging is not fatal because our work is simply a baseline for an undergraduate to pick up in a year. We aren’t so much interested in the data but what aspects of collection did and didn’t work.
Here is an example of an image collected by the box:
We’ve discovered the application of this box to not be ideal as we have to be so close to the ground:
On the last day of the feild we rooted all of our plants out. We have collected them by row and we are drying them out in the green house. Once the plants have no more water we will weigh them and get a biomass. Our next week will be spent processing the images we collected and documenting our notes for the next person to use when moving forward in this project.
On Saturday I had a full day off so I went book shopping and read by the beach. The ocean was so calm that I decided I had to take advantage of that so I jumped in and went snorkeling. I totally forgot to take any pictures. It was a wonderful day. I’m excited to snorkel again and maybe even go back to the book shop.
I’m excited to share how that data turns out with you next week.
Until then, aloha,
Rachael Burson.
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