To all:
I am trying to help an educator who is developing an interactive,
educational tool on CD for junior high school students. It is focused at
getting students from schools that do not have access to laboratory
facilities to experience this aspect of science through a virtual
laboratory.
Her most recent project is focused on "How European Corn Borer Affects the
Yield of Corn". To accomplish the laboratory portion, where students
plant both B.t. and non-B.t. corn and infest them or not with ECB, she
needs to get some idea of what the losses might be so the students
actually get meaningful data from their virtually growing plants.
Here are her assumptions. Can someone tell me if they seem reasonable for
greenhouse grown plants?
56 lb/bu = 25.2 kg/bu
90,000 kernels/bushel
weight of 1 kernel = 0.28 g
# kernels/ear = 600
weight of kernels/ear = 168 g
She also uses high and low infestation levels and sees more dramatic yield
reductions in the high infestation plants. The numbers below are an
average of 3 plants.
g/ear
Bt variety #1 Bt variety #2 nonBt #1 nonBt
#2
no infestation 163 186 163 185
low infestation 165 177 157 173
high infestation 161 158 128 139
Thank you in advance for any help you can give us.
Peggy
Peggy G. Lemaux, Ph.D.
Department of Plant and Microbial Biology
111 Koshland Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720
Phone: 510-642-1589
FAX: 510-642-7356
Web address: http://ucbiotech.org
