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International Journal of Plant Biology is published by MDPI from Volume 13 Issue 1 (2022). Previous articles were published by another publisher in Open Access under a CC-BY (or CC-BY-NC-ND) licence, and they are hosted by MDPI on mdpi.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with PAGEPress.
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Article

Effects of Sampling Methods on Starch Granule Size Measurement of Potato Tubers under a Light Microscope

by
Xiu-Qing Li
1,*,
Jichong Zhang
1,2,3,
Sainan Luo
1,
Gongshe Liu
3,
Agnes Murphy
1,
Yves Leclerc
4 and
Ti Xing
5
1
Potato Research Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 850 Lincoln Road, P.O. Box 20280, Fredericton, NB E3B 4Z7, Canada
2
Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 101408, China
3
Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100045, China
4
McCain Foods Canada Ltd., Florenceville, NB E7L 1B2, Canada
5
Department of Biology, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6, Canada
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Int. J. Plant Biol. 2011, 2(1), e5; https://doi.org/10.4081/pb.2011.e5
Submission received: 1 February 2011 / Revised: 20 May 2011 / Accepted: 27 May 2011 / Published: 10 June 2011

Abstract

Measurement of starch granules by lightmicroscope is the preferred approach in most laboratories because it is simple, rapid and visual and because both size and shape can be investigated. However, juice from potato tubers consists of starch granules of very different sizes and precipitation/movement speeds which can cause artefacts when sampling the juice and recording microscopic images. In the previously described method, a razor blade was used to scrape and transfer juice from potato tubers directly to a drop of water on a slide for microscopic observation. In this study we used chambers made from tape on microscopic slides to reduce the cover-slip-induced shifting of small and medium granules. We improved the starch measurement reproducibility by testing various juice sampling methods. The reproducibility between repeated experiments using 10 cultivars was increased from a correlation coefficient r = 0.815 in the razor-blade-scraping method to r = 0.923 in a squeezing-juice method. The largest starch granule detected was 151 μm in length. Sampling methods (using a razor-blade or a garlic press) strongly influenced the granule length values measured from the same potato tuber. The results indicated that (1) The squeezing- juice approach is more reproducible, and (2) The average length of starch granules is one of the most reproducible scores but varies according to juice-sampling methods.
Keywords: starch granule; potato; shape; size starch granule; potato; shape; size

Share and Cite

MDPI and ACS Style

Li, X.-Q.; Zhang, J.; Luo, S.; Liu, G.; Murphy, A.; Leclerc, Y.; Xing, T. Effects of Sampling Methods on Starch Granule Size Measurement of Potato Tubers under a Light Microscope. Int. J. Plant Biol. 2011, 2, e5. https://doi.org/10.4081/pb.2011.e5

AMA Style

Li X-Q, Zhang J, Luo S, Liu G, Murphy A, Leclerc Y, Xing T. Effects of Sampling Methods on Starch Granule Size Measurement of Potato Tubers under a Light Microscope. International Journal of Plant Biology. 2011; 2(1):e5. https://doi.org/10.4081/pb.2011.e5

Chicago/Turabian Style

Li, Xiu-Qing, Jichong Zhang, Sainan Luo, Gongshe Liu, Agnes Murphy, Yves Leclerc, and Ti Xing. 2011. "Effects of Sampling Methods on Starch Granule Size Measurement of Potato Tubers under a Light Microscope" International Journal of Plant Biology 2, no. 1: e5. https://doi.org/10.4081/pb.2011.e5

APA Style

Li, X. -Q., Zhang, J., Luo, S., Liu, G., Murphy, A., Leclerc, Y., & Xing, T. (2011). Effects of Sampling Methods on Starch Granule Size Measurement of Potato Tubers under a Light Microscope. International Journal of Plant Biology, 2(1), e5. https://doi.org/10.4081/pb.2011.e5

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