Those are images of the first batch of samples (Dark Virginia seeds, not pre-soaked), I’ll take pictures of everything and post it next week. But here are the preliminary reports of what different water types do to tobacco seeds:

• Every seed submerged in deuterium depleted water (DDW) sprouted little hairs on the initial root (the radicle). The interesting thing is this happened almost immediately after emerging from the seed coat.
• Typically the seeds submerged in deionized water (DI water) germinated the slowest. More will come on this when I replicate the Crumley experiment.
• Little hairs sprouted inconsistently on the seeds in tap and DI water but are more prevalent on the DI water seedlings. They are not as abundant on these seedlings as they are on the ddw seedlings. If I had to give an analogy (and I do) then I would say the ddw seedlings can grow a nice ‘fro, while the other seeds exhibit male pattern baldness.
• The little hairs remain localized on the end of the root and aren’t distrubted along the hypocotyl (early stem, and I almost said axon, lol!) so I’m inclined to believe that this is an early root system that is developing because of a lack of nutrients in the water (seen on ddw, most DI, and almost no tap water seeds). But I’m no botanist so I’m just guessing. The fact that the hairs are really prominent in the ddw seeds might suggest the plant recognizes the lack of deuterium, but I’m not willing to make that leap yet.

I setup a new photography system for these seeds. Dr. Koch lent me his Nikon D40 dSLR camera and I purchased some magnification lenses for it. I have the camera setup on an optical post and use a cylindrical lens holder to mount the seed samples (in cuvettes). The picture quality is much better now, with a much higher resolution. I’ll be looking into microscope images soon. Soon I’ll be developing a reliable way to measure the germination, but let’s not jump the shark now. All will be revealed in due time.

Also I was going to measure the pH of the samples at this stage of their development to gain some insight into whether the germination event drastically alters the pH, but the probe in the lab is too big and I don’t have enough sample volume. So I’m thinking that next week I combine the volumes of the water (of each type) to do one “average” measurement. There are four samples of each water type, two for each seed species, and each is filled about 2ml which would give me 8mL of combined volume for each water type. I’m just waiting for the pre-soaked samples to reach full germination (ie shed the seed coat). Now I’m not saying this will work, and it may not be reliable, but hopefully it is a decent approximation for expectations for now until I learn a little bit more.