1. What is the independent variable in this activity? Explain why you chose this.

stimulus is a change in the environment that causes an organism to react. the response is the reaction to the stimulus. some examples of stimuli for zebras are drought, to many predators, and bad feeding grounds such as dead grass or plants. zebras respond to stimuli just like all other living organisms

the last one: artificial selection/genetic engineering

plant breeding is modifying the genetic composition of the plant - but this isn't cloning (which is specifically introducing a gene into a genome). but you are artificially selecting for the phenotype that you want.

the second one is literally genetic engineering - the gene would have been cloned first and then inserted or genetically engineered into the new plant cell (the cotton).