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Undergraduate Research at UMass Dartmouth
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Fifteen mature basil plants were purchased, numbered,
and transplanted into larger pots. Plants
1–7 were planted traditionally, upright (displayed in
Figure 1a.), and plants 8–15 were planted in pots
fashioned so that the plant would hang upside down
(displayed in Figure 1b.). Stalks that had a second
set of true leaves, and sufficient space between the
pairs to make a cut, were pruned.
After four weeks of growth, it was observed that
stems of upright plants that had been pruned on
Day 1 had established pairs of offshoot stems with
two or three sets of leaves. Stems of upside-down
plants that had been pruned on Day 1 had established
pairs of offshoot stems with only one or two
sets of leaves. This suggests that the upright plants
experienced increased growth compared to the
upside-down plants. Figures 2. and 3 display this
growth difference.
Several obstacles were encountered in trying to
maintain healthy plants. Challenges included:
growing basil during the late winter/early spring
months (which is not basil’s typical growing season
for this region), securing an indoor location that met
the environmental needs of basil, and the presence
of insects.
Due to the complications with maintaining consistently
healthy plants, no formal measurements
with the experimental plants have been taken at
this time, but there have been several practice
measurements including extracting chlorophyll and
measuring the wavelengths with a spectrophotometer,
staining stem cross sections with toluidine blue
and observing the plant vasculature under a microscope,
and experimenting with different grip set-ups
for tensile testing. Images of the practice stained
samples are shown in Figure 4.
Figure 1a. The upright basil plants
Figure 1b. Some of the upside down basil plants on a garment rack