PROTOCOLS TESTING AMINO ACIDS COMPLEX

Purpose of use; Amino Acids Complex is used to provide the plant with an optimal mix of strengthening and growth-promoting substances that are supportive for maintenance, growth, vitality, and reproduction. In short, administering this product gives plants more energy (via the Krebs cycle) and more resistance, which is reflected in many aspects: better color and larger leaves, more roots, more flowers, more and/or larger fruits, healthier crop, etc. Reactions will depend on the type of crop, the variety, and the conditions.

Thorough test of the amino acids Complex

In order to quickly test products, it is best to work with fast-growing plants. Examples are oats, beans, peas, lettuce. Watercress can also be used, but it is difficult to measure anything with those plants. This plant is more to demonstrate toxicity rather than growth reactions.

We assume oats, beans, peas, or lettuce here. Make sure you have at least 6 pots per treatment. The control where we only give water is also a treatment. So if you want to test 2 concentrations of Aminocore Complex and 2 concentrations of another product, then you have 2+2+1 = 5 treatments. Per treatment 6 pots gives a total of 30 pots. Try to form blocks where all pots with different treatments are placed together. In this example, you get 6 spots, each with 5 pots, each pot with a different treatment. Ensure good labels to distinguish the treatments!

Use pots with a diameter of 17 cm (usually 2 L pots) and fill these with standard seed soil, so no potting soil. Sow 10 seeds per pot with 2 seeds close to each other each time. Ensure that the seed is at a depth approximately equal to the diameter of the seed. Water the seeds and let them germinate at high relative humidity and warm temperature (18-20 degrees is fine). Keep the soil moist during germination. Because the intention is that you test with comparable plants, after germination, the plants are thinned. This is done after the formation of the first pair of true leaves (not the cotyledons). From each set of plants that stand close to each other, remove the weakest plant by cutting the stem, so do not pull out the plant because you can damage the other plant. You now have 5 plants per pot.

Now it is also time to start the treatments. This can be done by pouring or spraying. You must use an equal amount of water per plant over all treatments.

For pouring, first determine how much water you need to give per pot, then divide this amount by five to obtain the amount of water per plant. It is advisable to water by hand because this is the most precise. Use, for example, a syringe to dose precisely. Ebb and flow and drip irrigation can work, but it already causes differences that have nothing to do with the treatments. The best is to make a larger amount of water with the correct concentration of product and then dose the correct amount per plant until you have treated all plants for that treatment. Then prepare the second treatment, and so on.

For spraying, make the right solution in a slightly larger amount than you need in total. Spraying is less precise than pouring because it is obviously much harder to dose exactly equal amounts per plant and even per pot. When spraying, always take the pot to be sprayed separately, otherwise, you will inevitably also spray other plants than intended.

To see if a product like Amino Acids Complex is effective, you could use a 0.05% (0.5 ml/L) solution 2x per week. This is sufficient for small plants.

On a weekly basis, observations can be made on each plant, such as length, color, leaf size, vitality. You can also choose to make observations per pot. Also, pay attention to differences in water need between the treatments. If in certain treatments the pots dry out faster, it means the plants are growing faster and thus consume more water. In that case, increase the water supply in these treatments because otherwise, growth is unnecessarily inhibited by a lack of water. Try to make at least 6 assessments per treatment (observations of the 6 pots per treatment) and register these observations/findings. Regularly take good photos to review things and discuss them later with others possibly. Four to six weeks after the treatments started, there should already be differences between the control and the treated plants. You can possibly apply a statistical test to the collected data, but that is something for the real agronomists and scientists.

Easy, less precise amino acids Complex test

If you want to get an impression of the functioning of Amino Acids Complex with less effort, you can choose to perform the above test less precisely by sowing the plants in rows or trays (still use seed soil) and not thinning further (although that is not much effort). You then get a row untreated (Control), a row with treatment 1, a row with treatment 2, etc. You can sow multiple rows per treatment, but try to keep all rows with different treatments together in a block. If you want to sow three rows per treatment, you create 3 blocks. The more blocks, the better you can really measure and see any differences between treatments. Watering is less precise as long as it is ensured that there are no major differences between treatments.

Products are dosed 2x per week, for example during the first watering session. Ensure that not too much water flows through the soil because you might lose product. Better a bit too dry than soaking wet! Spraying in rows is not recommended unless you use separate movable containers that you can move for spraying. Further take the same measurements/observations as described above, but the intervals between observations can be longer. Regularly take good photos to review things and discuss them later with others possibly.