Project:

Identifying Various Types of Weeds on Athletic Fields Using DNA Barcoding

Students:

Aline Bardizbanian, Madison Ong, Kassey Almirall, Victoria Jiang

School:

Garden City High School, Nassau

Mentors:

Steven Gordon

Abstract:

Weed samples will be collected from different locations on the athletic field and photographed for visual identification. Then we preserve all the plants and extract their DNA, amplifying the rbcL gene with the PCR reaction. We are aiming to find the rbcL gene of each plant in order to identify its species. Our data will help determine whether DNA barcoding provides a more accurate method of identifying weed species compared to image-based identification tools like iNaturalist. From our experiment we can learn about techniques such as DNA barcoding that can improve accuracy of plant identification and reinforce better management of weeds on school fields.

Poster:

Team samples:

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