Our project’s goal was to observe the effects that manipulating the seed coat had on germination rates. The seed coat is important for protecting the seed in the ground, but we were wondering if it is completely necessary. To test this, we used soybean species and had some serve as a control group, some where the coat was nicked with a needle, and some where the seed coat was completely removed. Over the course of 3.5 days, the seeds were placed in petri dishes with wet paper towels, and we periodically checked all the seeds and recorded how many of each treatment had germinated. Because another group completed this project with us, we focused mostly on the control group vs. the nicked group. Our results show a trend in faster germination among the nicked seed coats, but after statistical analysis we cannot conclude that nicking of the seed coat leads to faster germination, and we must say that the differences observed most likely occurred by chance.
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