Short Question Discussion Assignment
INSTRUCTIONS
| The chapter is clearly improved, see attached for word doc with comments. The introduction and methods are good, and the results a lot better. |
| Intro – make sure to keep it all relevant. You talk about protein in humans but LL is grown for animals in general, so make sure you don’t only talk about humans. |
| Methods – add 2,3,4,5,6,7,8 to the table |
| Results – some of it needs adding to. You don’t just present graphs and then move on. You need to discuss the soil water data, not just put 7 graphs in then move on. |
| You need to get more out of the data. Don’t just say there were differences, say what the difference was (see my addition for stomata cell number and area in section 3.3.2) |
| Also, for example with dry biomass, you can say how much it dropped under stress (eg 50% lower, 10% lower, 80% lower), not just ‘it was lower’. The biomass section is confusing. The numbers don’t match the graph and they shouldn’t be %, they are grams. |
| Stomatal conductance you need to be more specific, its not clear what you’re talking about when you say its higher or the same. These are quite complicated graphs and so its not easy to explain, but you can say a bit more. |
| The discussion, I’m sorry, is really hard to follow and not very good. I want to be positive but with so little time left, I need to tell you its not good enough. It is hard to follow, it doesn’t discuss your results clearly, and it is very superficial. I have said this before, but it needs to focus on your results and putting them into the wider context. It’s not just about saying some of the same things as the introduction.
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| I would like you to try rewriting this from scratch, do not edit what’s there because it feels muddled and I think it needs to be reorganised clearly. But I will help you with a plan. Something like this: |
| 1. Did your treatment provide a change in soil moisture? Yes – and refer to the data about soil moisture. It is important you did this. |
| Then, overall which traits differed among varieties and which differed between treatments. |
| 2. Then, biomass. What did you find (biomass significantly reduced under stress)? How much of a biomass reduction was there in the stressed treatment? Which varieties had the greatest and least drop in biomass? Was the drop higher for the wild var or the cultivated var or the same? |
| Compare to the literature – has anyone done this in lablab or other legumes? Do they also find a reduction in biomass? (I presume so). |
| 3. Then stomata – what did you find? Where were the sig differences? There was an effect of treatment on stomata number (generally fewer under WW conditions) but no effect of treatment on stomata area. There were no differences between varieties for stomata number, but there were differences between varieties for stomatal area (generally greater in wild accessions). |
| Now compare to the literature – why would there be fewer stomata under WW conditions? Why would some accessions have larger or smaller stomata (maybe adaptation to the climate of the collection location?). What have other studies shown about the effect of water stress on stomata number and size? |
| 4. Epi cells. Nothing was significant at P<0.05 but there seems to be some trends, and certainly some accessions have a much greater difference in epi cell size under stress vs WW. |
| Compare to the lit – why might it be very different for some varieties (eg unc7) and no change for others (unc8). Could epi cell size be an adaptation? Could drought stress be affecting the different varieties differently? |
| 5. correlations – the data isn’t presented at all, so I don’t know what it shows, but make sure you add this and then discuss it. |
| 6. Stom Conductance. It’s a bit hard to generalise results here as its very up and down. But make sure to comment on this. The measurements were done on the same day, but it might be that the WW and stressed plants had only just been watered or watered a few days ago (is this right?). |
| 7. SYNTHESISE the findings. |
| Try to think why different varieties might differ (maybe they are locally adapted from their collection location). Why might some varieties show little response to stress in some traits and others show a greater response? Make sure to refer back to the wider literature. |
| 8. You also need to think about what else you could do, eg a follow-up experiment. What would you like to do? Add more accessions? Measure more traits? Which traits and why? |
