Abstract
Plants modulate their growth rates based on the environmental signals; however, it is difficult to experimentally test how natural temperature and light fluctuations affect growth, since realistic outdoor environments are difficult to replicate in controlled laboratory conditions, and it is expensive to conduct experiments in many environmentally diverse regions. In partnership with BBC Terrific Scientific, over 50 primary schools from around the UK grew spring onions outside of hydroponic growth chambers that they constructed. Over 2 weeks, students measured the height of the spring onions daily, while the hourly temperature and visibility data were determined for each school based on the UK Meteorological Office data. This rich time series data allowed us to model how plants integrate temperature and light signals to determine how much to grow, using techniques from functional data analysis. We determined that under nutrient‐poor hydroponic conditions, growth of spring onion is sensitive to even a few degrees change in temperature, and is most correlated with warm nighttime temperatures, high temperatures at the start of the experiment, and light exposure near the end of the experiment. We show that scientists can leverage schools to conduct experiments that leverage natural environmental variability to develop complex models of plant‐environment interactions.
Highlights
It is important for the general public to gain an appreciation and deeper understanding of the scientific process
We show that growth rates of spring onion throughout the time course are correlated with the temperature at earlier times during the time course
We find that elevating nighttime or daytime temperatures causes a significant increase in spring onion height, so we can conclude that spring onions are sensitive to small temperature changes and that they do not exclusively depend on the daily maximum or minimum temperatures
Summary
It is important for the general public to gain an appreciation and deeper understanding of the scientific process. Citizen science provides a way for researchers to engage the public while collecting valuable scientific data that can augment their research. The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) Terrific Scientific program launched a series of mass participation science experiments to get primary school students to collect data of scientific value. One example of the data collected as part of this project relates to the behavior of children, including their sleep patterns before and after daylight savings time and the influence of exercise on their attention spans. In another case, the data collected were related to schools, Plant Direct. The data collected were related to schools, Plant Direct. 2019;1–11
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