Measuring the growth of plant. - Ways to measure the growth of plants. (Apr/17/2008 )
I am currently doing a project related to plant and i want to ask if what are the ways to measure the rate of circulation in the plant or rate of production. Which method is the best?
your question is too vague. lots of different variables to evaluate in plant growth, i.e. morphological, physiological, a certain compound accumulation, etc...
Overall growth is pretty easy, if you want it on the macro scale. Just put your plant up against a wall with grid lines of certain heights/dimensions behind it and take a photo every day (or whatever time scale you like) compare before and after photos for measurements. You will need to take photos from the same spot (height and distance and angle from plant) every time.
Outside of this it gets a bit harder. You can measure the rate of water uptake by putting a cut stem into a coloured dye and seeing how fast this travels up the stem etc. (easiest in herbaceous plants, cause they are easier to see through). If you wanted to be really tricky you could pulse the dye and see how far it traveled over time.
Outside of this it gets a bit harder. You can measure the rate of water uptake by putting a cut stem into a coloured dye and seeing how fast this travels up the stem etc. (easiest in herbaceous plants, cause they are easier to see through). If you wanted to be really tricky you could pulse the dye and see how far it traveled over time.
after taking all the photos you could also make a little video to see directly the plant growht, each photography would be a frame of this video.
i heard of translocation but how do we measure ? any advice?
as bob suggested, you can use fresh cut stems, flowers are good, like chrysanthemum or carnations (a lot of people don't like carnations 
so nobody will mind) and use colored water to see how it advances through the vascular tissues.