You may have thought this through already; but mention of it was absent in previous postings and I think it is important to mention. Have you taken into consideration differing growth rates of rhizome mass and blade mass in relation to time of year, relative conditions, etc? That is to say, if you are looking at growth rate as measured by mass, it will likely vary seasonally- fall rhizomes will be more massive than spring rhizomes, spring blades will be shorter but more lush than late summer blades, and so on. Depending on the biology of Phragmites australis, there might be an important difference to look out for. - Jacob Heiling
On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 6:11 PM, Ted Turluck <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello, > > I've posted before with questions about other methods and got a lot of > responses. Thank you to all who responded before. > > I'm going to be starting an experiment in which I plan to measure growth > rates of two different haplotypes of Phragmites australis under varying > water depths and salinities. I plan to use change in height and number of > shoots over time as a measure of growth. I'm planting rhizome fragments. > I'll measure length, diameter, number of nodes, and number of buds before > planting. I'll try to make the fragments as similar in size as possible. > > I would like to measure biomass before and after as well (or maybe > instead). But I don't know if measuring fresh biomass before planting and > after harvest is a legitimate method. > > Would there be a chance that there would be a difference in moisture > content between each rhizome fragment that could mess up my data? > > Is height change a good way of measuring growth in grasses? > > Is fresh biomass a good thing to measure before and after a growth > experiment? > > Thanks for any advice. >
