First, I washed 12 of the plastic dishes to ensure that there was no foreign contaminant. After cleaning them, I marked each dish with a Sharpie based on the type of soil that was going into it and its group number. (Ex. Haiti 2). These dishes were used to plant the barley seeds into different soil profiles. I then tested all of the dishes to make sure they were waterproof, to avoid cross contamination of soil profiles. To enusre that the barley seeds would grow, I planted 4 seeds into the last clean dish, seperately from the experiment, to test the seeds. In my experiment, they germinated within 3-5 days in the environmental chamber after planting, with minimal water. Then, I made the 3 soil profiles. For the Kenyan soil profile, I collected soil with clay and added sedimentary rocks throughout to simulate a rocky clay based soil that lacks nutrients and organic matter. For the Australian soil profile, I added a sand/gravel mixture to a clay based soil to simulate sandy soil that also lacks nutrients. For the Haitian soil profile, I used silty clay soil and weathered it as much as possible, by using soil that plants were heavily grown in. This was to simulate eroison and soil degradation. For the control group, I used fertile soil with lots of clay, silt, and organic matter, to simulate the "ideal" soil profile for crops to grow in. None of the soil being tested (except for control) was allowed to be topsoil, since topsoil is rich in nutrents and organic matter. After creating the soil profiles, I inserted 1 soil profile per dish per tray. For the Australian soil profile and the control soil profile, I massed out 323.6 grams of each soil profile per dish. For the Haiti and Kenyan soil profiles, I massed out 200.0 grams of each soil profile per dish, since the soil was looser and 323.6 grams would have overflowed the dishes. I massed the soil by using a triple beam balance that read up to 3 decimal places. After finishing, there were 3 total dishes for each of the 4 soil profiles, making a total of 12 dishes. Then, I added 8 barley seeds per profile and packed them into the soil. I put the trays into the environmental chamber so they could get equal light. While the seeds germinated, I created a solution of butyric acid, using a density of 4g/L. I mixed 4g of rooting hormone into a 1000mL beaker and stored it in the fridge with plastic wrap. Every day of data collection, I used the stirring rod to mix the water and rooting hormone, then added 10mL of the solution to each dish per day of data collection. I recorded growth daily in centimeters and took pictures every other day of data collection to visually document growth.