COMMENTS ON THE USE OF REGRESSION ANALYSIS FOR THE STUDY OF PLANT GROWTH.

The adaptations of plants to environment can take many morphological and physiological forms. The rate at which new plant material is accumulated is an integrated measure of plant response to environment and is a useful character when comparing either genetic differences between populations or effects of different environmental conditions on populations. Several approaches have been made to the study of quantitative plant growth. With frequent harvesting, regression analysis provides a powerful tool in describing the relationship of total weight with time. In this paper we have adopted procedures outlined by Draper and Smith (1966) and applied regression analysis to two sets of data from our programme on Atriplex. These demonstrate ways in which appropriate polynomial regression equations can be objectively applied to the total weight-time relationship. Implications of fitting an inappropriate regression equation and the problems of extrapolation are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]