Hydro Priming Seeds with Cheetos

Brian Rawlings wrote in to share an experiment he’s working on with his 9-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son: using Cheetos as a hydroponic medium.

Hydro-priming is the process of soaking seeds in water before planting. Hydro-priming decreases the time it takes seeds to germinate. For this experiment, we wanted to test how different concentrations of Cheetos in the water would affect the germination rates of pea seeds. Do you expect that Cheetos will help or hinder the germination of seeds?

Brian and kids prepared seven cups with a varying number of Cheetos and either a half-cup of water or else no water. 100 snow pea seeds were added to each cup and every 12 hours, the seeds were removed to see how many had germinated.