Agriculture Assessment – Elective Research Study - Zach Taylor – Term 2, 2018
Part A
Question 1 - State a conclusion and a recommendation from this research
Conclusion
Temperature effects plant growth and development depending on the type of plant or species. The exposure of temperature extremes exhibits s larger impact on grain yield then on vegetative growth because of the increased minimum temperatures. If plants are exposed to extreme temperatures at the onset of the reproductive stage this has a major impact on the fruit and grain’s production Observations were made that show maize grain yield is greatly reduced by above normal temperatures during the grain filling period.
Recommendation
A recommendation for this experiment is to select certain varieties of plants that pollenate early in the morning when temperatures are cooler to minimize the impact that extreme temperatures have on the plant’s production.
Explain how the design of this research study contributed to the validity of its conclusions.
There are many ways/methods to increase the validity of an experiment, these methods include the controlling of variables, increasing randomization, adding control groups, the way the experiment is done and the analysis of the results.
In this research they increased their validity by:
· The controlling of variables-It is important to ensure that all the variables are isolated, because an error may occur if an unknown factor influences the dependent variable. This is why if you don’t control your variables it can severely damage the validity of the experiment. In this research paper they controlled the temperature with high accuracy technology.
· The Method-The way the experiment is run can majorly impact the validity on an experiment. The method may contain assumptions or a hypothesis that need to be satisfied. The method must ensure that all the assumptions are satisfied, otherwise you will be end up using a method of analysis that is inappropriate and the result will be invalid. In this experiment they satisfied all the hypothesis and assumptions such as “temperature effects crop species throughout their life cycle”. By satisfying this it increases the validity of the experiment as there no “loose ends” or things that can be questioned.
By the experiment using these techniques to increase validity it gives them more credit and reputation to give a strong and evident conclusions as it is valid.
Replication- A use of replication used in this experiment was that they used 2 experiments. Replication is important for a number of reasons, including assurance that results are valid and reliable determination of generalizability or the role of extraneous variables application of results to real world situations and inspiration of new research combining previous findings from related studies. But most importantly using replication increases accuracy.
Standardisation- A use of standardisation that was used in this experiment was the control...
