Daily Journal

February 18:

Today we set up the blog, and assigned different roles to the members in our group. Ajeet is the blogger, Lauren is the journalist, Alexa is doing the experiments and Viney is a little bit of all three!

February 19:

Today we went through the actual process of doing the experiment. For details, look under "Procedure" to see exactly what was done today. For this experiment, our group was designated to use untreated kohlrabi seeds.

February 21:

Today was the first time we observed the seeds. There were no problems and everything happened as we had planned it to.

Day 1 - Room Temperature Seeds

•  The paper towel was damp
• 28 of the approximately 100 seeds showed no signs of sprouting.
• The visible sprouts measured an average of 2 mm.

 





  

Day 1 - Heat Mat Temperature Seeds

• The paper towel is completely dry on one side, and slightly damp on the other
• 15 of the approximately 100 seeds showed no signs of sprouting.
• The visible sprouts measured an average of 1.5 cm.
• The roots began forming, looking almost transparent, fuzzy, and fluffy.
• Some roots were attached to the paper towel.

 

 

 

Day 1 - Fridge Temperature Seeds

• The paper towel was very wet, ( there was more moisture in it now than it initially started with).
• There were no seeds that showed any sign of sprouting.

 

February 25:

 

Today we observed the Kohlrabi for the last time. We then chose certain sprouts we wished to examine underneath the microscope. Here are some pictures of us observing the Kohlrabi sprouts:



                   

Day 2 (Final day) - Room Temperature Seeds

 

• Every seed sprouted; although, many died because they did not recieve enough water.
• The seeds that survived were all very dry and discoloured (yellow).
• Many had a brown lining around the edge of each leaf.
• The roots were attached to the paper towel.
• The paper towel was very dry and the seeds that survived best were only in the damp areas.
• The average length of sprouts is 4.5 cm long.
• All seeds showed Dicots.

Day 2 (Final day) - Heat Mat Temperature Seeds (32 degrees celcius)

 

• Only 21 seeds survived.
• The dead seeds were in areas where the paper towel was dried up.
• The roots of the living seeds were attached to the paper towel.
• The average length of the living sprouts was 6 cm long.
• The paper towel was damp, with only a few dry areas.
• The living sprouts were a yellow-green mixture in terms of colour.
• There were two moldy seeds. One had a dark mold, the other had a white mold.

Day 2 (Final day) - Fridge Temperature Seeds (4 degrees celcius)

 

• Two seeds showed a small sign of life.
• There was a very small slit of green in these two seeds.
• The paper towel was very wet.

Observations using a microscope:

We decided to take a moldy seed from the heat mat temperature paper towel and observe it under the microscope. We found that the moldy seed was covered with a lot of strands of grey/black fuzz with little round dots on the end of each strand. On each strand and dot there were miniscule strands of fuzz sticking straight up.

We also observed an unhealthy leaf and a healthy leaf.

The unhealthy leaf showed a brown line, that was very thin, silhouetting the leaves. It appeared that the inside of the seed shell was orange, as shown in the picture below. The roots in this microscope view are white/transparent and fuzzy with a shadow of darkness defining the texture. The roots were kinky, and irregularly shaped.

 

We next observed a healthy leaf. The healthy leaf was green in colour, with much texture within the leaf. The texture appeared to be like a grid of streaks covering the surface of the leaf. There was not a brown lining on the outside of the leaf, like there was with the unhealthy leaf.  The green colour gradually faded into the white colour of the sprout. Here is an image of the healthy leaf: