Feeding the world in coming decades will require recruiting some of the best minds of coming generations. Meanwhile, the number of U.S. high school graduates with personal experience of crop fields and gardens is declining. The Plant and Soil Sciences eLibrary (http://plantandsoil.unl.edu/croptechnology2005/pages/index.jsp ) was developed to teach science concepts fundamental to life. To show how concepts taught in a Flowering Principles Lesson are applied in real life careers, developers produced lessons on Hybrid Corn and Native Flower Breeding. This study is part of an ongoing effort to find out whether the application lessons help students of different backgrounds in a freshman-level Plant Science course. Students can get extra credit if they respond to the survey. Variables include how difficult the items were, and whether the items came directly from the lessons or required transfer to a different kind of living thing (trees). We hypothesized that students with prior experience with field crops or garden seeds might have an advantage. Additional student data will be available at the end of this semester, but based on 2010 data, the application lessons may function as a form of virtual experience, allowing students with no experience of a topic to pass the items at similar rates to the high experience group. A line graph contrasting the class average pass rate with four subgroups: those with either high or no experience of field crops, and either high or no experience with garden seeds. We found the five pass rates are quite similar for each item, which suggests that prior experience with the topic does not give students an advantage for passing the assessment items. This is a desirable outcome for instructional purposes. Future studies might look at whether students with no experience come from schools with stronger science programs, allowing them to do as well.