trouble with cabbage cloning experiment

[ACPM]

My son selected a cabbage cloning project ("Attack of the Killer Cabbage Clones") from your website. We bought all of the items and began the experiment on the 16th of January. He followed each step of the instructions very carefully. He has been checking his specimens and making his notes and observations for two weeks. He is supposed to be seeing clones growing from at least some of his cabbage pieces, but in each and every condition, either nothing is happening, or else the piece of cabbage is disintegrating. There is not a single clone to be seen. Needless to say, he is disappointed at having nothing to show for his work, and I'm wondering what if he did anything incorrectly, or what else could have gone wrong. He has to turn in the data and make his display board this week, but he is now unsure how to deal with analyzing the whole thing. The experiment came from this web site -- does anyone know anything about it? Thank you.

[deleted-42343]

Hi ACPM

We are trying to find one of our plant experts to help answer your questions. Unfortunately, we might not have any plant experts that check in early in the week (each Expert has a day they are supposed to check the boards).

I'll try to help as best I can.

Every single experiment I have ever done had problems I had to solve. What your son is experiencing, while frustrating (believe me I know!) is completely normal. I think plant experiments can be especially frustrating because you don't get immediate feedback like you can with some other experiments. So if something goes wrong, you only find out about it later. In general, for any project, it's a good idea to start earlier so you have more time than you think you will need. Problems almost always come up somewhere in the project . Someone I know did a very advanced plant project over one summer (3 months worth of research). They used the wrong type of water source and ended up killing the plants. She didn't end up with the results she wanted, but now she is at a great college and is still doing research. So don't let this setback prevent your son from loving science, everything will turn out ok in the end.

At this point in time, your son can't redo the project. I'd focus on trouble shooting and trying to figure out what went wrong. Learning how to problem solve is an important aspect of a science fair project. If your son is able to say what might have gone wrong, and how he would fix it in the future, I think his project will turn out fine.

Here are some suggestions:

1) I know that when I've tried growing plants, I sometimes had problems with mold. Is there any mold in the bags? Contamination like mold would kill the cabbage.
2) Have you been spraying the plants with water each week?
3) Have you gone through the procedure again to make sure you didn't miss a step?

Your son should talk about the following in his results:

-What things could have gone wrong?
-How could I fix them?
-What results should I have gotten? (Talk about what the cloned cabbage might have looked like had it grown properly)
-Talk about how he intended to analyze the results. He could even make up some example data to demonstrate what he expected and why (be sure to make it clear that it is just example data and not real data)

Let us know if you have anymore questions, and good luck!

[ACPM]

Thanks for the reply.

There is no mold.

Plants have been misted with water, as per instructions. Condensation has occurred, but the instructions say that is normal.

We have gone over every step several times, and did not miss anything. That is why neither of us can think of what could be going wrong.

I did wonder about preparing the stems. Although he measured and cut them according to the instructions, I wondered exactly how careful he should have been -- how they should be handled, etc. I wish, too, that there had been a photo of what the stems were supposed to look like. We selected a long-stemmed cabbage, as recommended, and cut them crosswise after removing the leafy part, but ultimately, I thought they looked odd, and wondered how on earth a one-inch piece of cabbage stem was going to clone itself inside a plastic bag, with just some soil, mulch, or another medium, and water. Of course, I kept those thoughts to myself, not wanting to discourage him from the start.

We are both really puzzled.

[MelissaB]

Hi,

I'm no plant expert, but I used to work in a cactus garden where we sometimes cloned plants. In my experience, it was often a tricky thing to do--sometimes it would work, and sometimes it wouldn't.

How fresh was the cabbage when you started? It's possible that the stem(s) you tried were already completely dead to begin with, and you might have gotten better results with a different cabbage.

Since you say that some are disintegrating, my first guess is that you used too much water. Water is a very tricky thing with plants; the plants in my house have survived because they are both drought and deluge-tolerant: I either underwater or overwater them. Plants need moist conditions, but if it's way too wet they will die.

Were the cabbage stems actually placed -in- the soil/other items? Were they completely buried or just partially buried? My experience is that clones are more likely to produce roots when they are in contact with something containing nutrients.

What is the temperature in your house, particularly near the window? Does it get cold there? If so, they probably just froze (another reason why they may be disintegrating) if you live somewhere cold.

My final suggestion is that perhaps you just didn't give it enough time--it's only been two weeks, after all. Still, I would guess that there should be some roots growing, if nothing else, after two weeks.

I am sorry the project didn't work out; like Amber says, this is very, very common in science and you shouldn't let your child be too disappointed. Instead, discuss some of these possibilities with him and then try to get him excited thinking about how he might test some of these possibilities (adding more or less water to bags, putting the bags further from the window, etc.).

Hope this helps!

[donnahardy2]

Hi,

Amber and Melissa have given you some excellent advice and perspective on this project; I have some additional suggestions for writing up the results. You should not worry at all about the results your son obtained and you should explain that the project was not a failure. With science projects, the important thing is the science and the experiment, not necessarily the results. Your son followed the protocol, set up the experiment, and obtained some results. Not necessarily the results he was expecting, but there were results. Instead of baby cabbage plants, he ended up with disintegrating pieces of cabbage. You should still write up the project and include all of the sections (question, hypothesis, purpose, background, procedure, results, and conclusion). The conclusion will be the interesting part of the write up because you need to explain what happened.

Here is a website that describes optimum conditions for starting cuttings:

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ep030

Note the information on environmental conditions. Besides having a suitable starting material, plant clones or cuttings require optimum temperature, humidity, light, and aeration. Obviously, conditions in your son’s experiment were not optimum for cloning and you might have him think about what might have prevented roots form starting to form.

I would guess that it might have been too humid inside the plastic bags and there probably wasn’t enough oxygen available for the plants. The temperature also may have been too low.

So what happened to the cabbage stems? If there’s no mold, then apparently bacteria were present that grew and started breaking down the cabbage pieces. Bacteria are naturally present on the surfaces of plants, and are ready to start the process of breaking down the plant material to recycle the elements if conditions are favorable. Here is some additional information that you can use to explain the results:

http://www.ecochem.com/t_compost_faq2.html

http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/publicatio ... 200013.doc

So, this was a microbiology/plant composting project, not a cloning project. It’s a great project and if your son can understand and explain what happened, a complete success. Sometimes unexpected results can be the source of great discoveries.

I hope this helps!

Donna Hardy

[deleted-42343]

Thanks Donna and Melissa!

I definitely agree with unexpected results turning into great success. My best project came about from a mistake I made in a different project. That's also how the microwave oven was invented. From Wikipedia: "The heating effect of microwaves was discovered accidentally in 1945. Percy Spencer, an American self-taught engineer from Howland, Maine, was building magnetrons for radar sets with the American company Raytheon. He was working on an active radar set when he noticed that a peanut chocolate bar he had in his pocket started to melt. The radar had melted his chocolate bar with microwaves. The first food to be deliberately cooked with Spencer's microwave was popcorn, and the second was an egg, which exploded in the face of one of the experimenters. To verify his finding, Spencer created a high density electromagnetic field by feeding microwave power into a metal box from which it had no way to escape. When food was placed in the box with the microwave energy, the temperature of the food rose rapidly."

Good luck with the project ACPM and I hope your son is not discouraged.

[ACPM]

Thank you to Amber, Donna, and Melissa.

We are going to have another look at everything soon. He's writing up his work now, and I'll let you know how things turned out.