Dear Olwethu,

It is very difficult to make any conclusions unless you provide further information. How did you calculate the R/S ratio? It is not clear from the ratio values what units it was based on. These ratios R/S can be calculated, for example, from the lengths, the weight of fresh or dry biomass ... You schould to give more details.

Best regards, Bozena

The conclusion you want to make from a research result depends usually on the goal of your research. For example, in your current research, you want to see that if there is any effect of the treatments on the root and shoot. You have calculated root shoot dry weight ratio. Control produced 1gm root and 2 gm shoot. T1 produced 2 gm root and 4 gram shoot. T3 produced 3gm root and 6 gm shoot. In all these cases, your root shoot dry weight ratio would be the same.

But we can clearly see, there is a strong effect of the treatments on the root and shoot. In that case my suggestion is to compare the roots and shoots among the treatments and control, analyze those based on your experimental design. That will be more informative.

If you want to statistically compare the ratio values among the treatments, you have to normalize the ratio value first, that's what I guess.

Dear Olwethu

The purpose of the control is to check if the treatments have an effect (positive or negative). If there is no significant difference between treatment and the control it may mean that the treatment have no effect. I hope you repeated the treatments so that you can statistically analyse your data. The more the repeats the more you are likely to have a true picture of your results (after analysis).

I wish you all best.

Dear Olwethu,

If testing vegetables have significantly higher the both above ground yield and under ground biomass in comparison to the control sample (and R/S ratios treatmented samples are closed to the control), your conclusions are acceptable. Your used treatment probably led to an increase in yield. You should focus on the other growth parameters as well.

Best regards, BS

It is a standard assumption in plant ecology that plants respond to their environment in such a way as to optimize their resource use (e.g. Bloom et al., 1985). One expression of such an optimization is the allocation between shoots and roots in response to nutrient availability. In general, when nutrient availability increases, plants allocate relatively less to their roots, which is consistent with a resource optimization hypothesis as increasing nutrient availability means that less effort is required to acquire this resource. Exceptions to this rule, when K, Mg or Mn are limiting (Ericsson, 1995), can be recast into the resource optimization hypothesis. Deficiencies of these elements lead also to a shortage of carbohydrates, which signifies to the plant that the allocation to light acquisition is sub‐optimum.

There could be differences in growth habits,life cycle,height , time of sampling and how sampling of the biomass was done.The ratios can change when the plant gets older,issues pest and disease susceptibility at different points during the growth cycle.The experiment should be repeated to validate the results

Root:shoot (R:S) ratio is related to biomass partitioning and it is mostly genetically controlled. We always look for efficient partitioning of biomass so that lower the R:S ratio higher the performance in leafy vegetables as the economical yield of leafy vegetables is from above ground biomass only if the total biomass is almost the same. Though your control had a comparatively lower R:S ratio its total biomass was low so that it cannot be recommended as a good treatment. However, your other treatments had comparatively higher R:S ratios as well as high total biomass and as a result ultimately they gave comparatively higher yields so that they can be recommended as better treatments. The most important point is that if you can genetically combine the low R:S ratio of your control and high total biomass of your other treatments you may be successful in achieving a much better yield than what you achieved at present.