Lettuce growth in extreme conditions

Over-fertilization is one of important environmental problems, but also affects plant nutritional status. To investigate the influence of over-fertilization on leaf mineral content, lettuce was hydroponically grown at higher nutrients concentrations. The experiment revealed no significant differences in leaf mineral content and root length between treatments, but we have observed much bigger variability of data at the lowest concentration. Similar trend has been observed comparing mobilities: more nutrients there are in a solution, significantly smaller the variability between plants is. Obviously, plants need to compete between each other at lower nutrients availability for their uptake, which increases variability, but not at higher.