okay, I just thought of something that I don't really
know if it is going to work, but hopefully it will.
Ths is regarding to my idea of my science fair.
I was thinking of finding the possibility of a tree
cancer. Looking cancer as a cell that is defected, I
will try to defect a tree cambrium cell or a leaf cell
to c if a tree cancer is possible. I don't know if it
will work, but if it does, hopefully it will carry me
to the nationals. Please give me idea or feedback.

Thank you,
Luc Tran

Cancer is the uncontrolled growth of cells. In trees, that's called a gall. It can be caused by various things: nematodes, insects, fungi, viroids, or bacteria. The most famous tree gall is "crown gall", caused by Agrobacteria tumefaciens. You could re
ad up on it; it's very interesting. However, it's a difficult science project, and infecting bonsai would be a rather cruel thing to do.

I would once again steer you away from "bonsai" as a project; trees are hard to do experiments on, even for tree pathologists. One tree pathologist I know did a series of experiments on IVY, because it is more tractable than trees, and he could do larger
experiments.

Judges in these contests are looking for good experimental design; they aren't expecting you to make a major discovery.

Having said that, if you are determined to do an experiment on bonsai, why not take a single bonsai with many branches and try to take air-layers using different methods? Everyone on the list has a different technique (aluminum foil versus plastic wrap; s
phagnum versus newspaper, girdling versus slits, etc.), and it would be fun to compare them.

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