Vitamin C a Key to Submerged Aquatic Vegetation
2011 Fairfax County Regional Science and Engineering Fair
The abstract below was written by the student. The Northern Virginia Soil and Water Conservation District made no editorial changes.
Vitamin C: The Key to SAV; The Effects of Vitamin C Concentrations on Anachris' Mass
by Sae-Li Kim and Sivasankari Rajamarthandan, Robinson Secondary
The purpose of this experiment was to assess the effects of additional vitamin C concentrations on the change in mass of anachris, a type of submerged aquatic vegetation. The four levels of IV were the control with no additional vitamin C, a flask with 2.33X 10??M, 4.66X 10??M, and 7.00X 10?? of vitamin C. It was hypothesized that the anachris grown in water with a vitamin C concentration of 4.66X 10??M would have the greatest increase in mass. The initial masses of all the anachris were kept constant so that there is no other fluctuation in the experiment. The vegetation was grown for a week under fluorescent lights. Initial and final dissolved oxygen (DO) levels were tested and O? probes were measuring oxygen concentration throughout the trial. At the end of every trial and anachris’ final masses were analyzed. In the four practice trials, the greatest average increase in mass was in IV level 2 with 1.21g. The three real trials showed that 2.33X 10??M and 4.66X 10??M had the greatest average increase in mass with 0.91g and 0.90g respectively. Thus vitamin C is vital to increasing plant mass, and the DO levels and the O? levels indicated that there is no negative effect on oxygen underwater. Therefore, vitamin C could be a possible temporary solution to reviving the low levels of submerged aquatic vegetation like anachris in ecosystems like the Chesapeake Bay and maintaining the health of the plants under stressful situation like pollution.