The little green onion that could: Determining the effect of varying salinities on the rate of regrowth of A. fistulosum
Abstract
Green onion (Allium fistulosum) regrowth is a method in which an individual can take one stalk and re-use it many times over, so it makes sense that one aspect of efficient green onion use would be maximizing the rate of regrowth. In this experiment, it was hypothesized that green onions regrown in high levels of NaCl will exhibit a lower rate of stalk and root regrowth than green onions regrown in low or no levels of NaCl. Two samples of A. fistulosum were assigned to one of three treatment groups (aqueous solutions of 0 mM NaCl, 10 mM NaCl, and 70 mM NaCl) for a total of six samples. Samples were allowed to grow for 18 days, and rates of regrowth were measured (mm) every 4 to 5 days using a tape measure. The obtained data underwent statistical analysis using a one-way ANOVA test, and the reported p-values were pstalk = 0.1493 and proot = 0.1499, both > 0.05. Therefore, the results of this study fail to indicate that there does exist a true difference between the means of the three treatment groups in relation to stalk regrowth and root regrowth, contrary to what evidence from the literature may suggest. This result could be explained by the small sample size (n = 2), or the selection of 10 mM NaCl as the low concentration treatment. A future experiment, with these experimental limitations fixed, is strongly recommended in order to verify the findings of this paper.
