By Taylor MacPherson

Carlton students conduct canola research at Canadian Light Source

Nov 18, 2016 | 4:00 PM

Nine students from P.A.’s Carlton Comprehensive Public High School will head to Saskatoon next week to conduct scientific research at the Canadian Light Source (CLS).

The students on the “Carlton Beam Team,” in Grades 9 to 12, have been studying the effects of potassium supplementation on canola plants infected with blackleg fungal disease. Next week the students will use the CLS beamlines to perform elemental and molecular analysis on the plants, enabling them to conclusively determine the effects of potassium on the disease.

“Our whole question that we want to research and find out at the CLS is if varying the amount of potassium in the soil will affect how the blackleg spreads in the plant,” Katie Tolley, one of the Grade 12 students involved in the project, said.

The students are testing three groups of 20 plants with different potassium levels, as well as a control group. Tolley said roughly 75 per cent of the plants are going to the CLS for analysis, while the others will be monitored at the school for additional data.

Tolley said preliminary findings have been surprising, because the plants grown in high levels of potassium have been showing more signs of blackleg than others.

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“We’ll know more once we look at it on a molecular level,” she said.

“There are two different beamlines that we get access to,” explained Grade 11 student Levi Lundell. “They both can map the plant, so it’s sort of like an X-ray except you can see either different elements and where they are within, say, the leaf, or different macronutrients and different types of them.”

Lundell said their study could have big financial impacts on Canada and Saskatchewan if their hypothesis – that potassium supplementation can inhibit blackleg – proves correct.

“I think any time we can reduce disease in a giant cash crop for the whole country it’s bringing in billions of dollars a year for Canada,” Lundell said. “In Saskatchewan we produce a lot of potash – a lot of potassium – so that would help our economy as well.”

Lynn Gordon, who has been instructing the students along with colleague Jenna Cross, said the teachers have been largely hands-off throughout the process.

“Our role as teachers in this is as facilitators for their learning,” Gordon said. “As far as the direction they want to go with their project, they’ve been working on this with the CLS and scientists at the CLS.”

For their participation in the study, the students receive class credit for a special project, as well as bragging rights as some of the youngest scientists to work on the CLS.

The project is funded by a $1,500 grant from the CLS. Co-op Agro donated the canola plants and potassium, and lent expertise to the project on several occasions.
 

–EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was changed at 8:33 a.m. on Nov. 21 to correct on error. The project grant is $1,500 not $15,000 as originally told.

Taylor.macpherson@jpbg.ca

@TMacPhersonNews