I am growing 2 different species of tobacco seed (Virginia Gold #1 and Dark Virginia purchased from The Tobacco Seed Company, as an aside I find it strange that we bought seeds from a company in England that gets their seeds from the United States) in different water buffers: regular tap water, 18MΩ deionized water (DI water), and deuterium depleted water (DD water).

I place 3 seeds of each species in a cuvette (I actually have no clue what company these are from because they are from a former student in the lab, but USA Scientific has a comparable type) and add one type of water. So there are a total of 6 cuvettes (3 for each species).

The experiment has way more to consider than I initially suspected which presents some interesting challenges. On top of that I don’t know all that much (right now) about how deuterium interacts with the environment and the seeds, and I don’t know the biochemistry of seed growth in general. Because of this I started a second set of experiments that are identical except that the seeds were presoaked in their respective buffers in the refrigerator in case the initial stages of growth dramatically changed the water solution.

Finally I’m in the process of figuring out how to accurately record growth rates and right now I’m using very primitive macro photography (my camera phone and a big magnifying lens), which will develop into more advanced macro photography (Dr. Koch’s personal DSLR with 10x magnification lens) and hopefully eventually evolve into the microscope and camera system. Here is my current photography setup:

I have a 2in lens with a focal length of about 3.5in setup on an adjustable post (which is mounted on a rail). I place cuvettes on a cylindrical lens holder (the clampy thing in the back) and adjust the lens height and distance to get the best picture. Most parts are opto-mechanics purchased from Thor Labs.