Layers of onions...

11-16 June

Today I cut, labelled and weighed 505 onion skin samples. There are 5 plots, for each plot I chose 10 onions to take 4 core samples of the brown skin. Each sample then was separated into the skin’s layers. Each layer was separated into a patty tin with a label.  I then weighed them. Their weights ranged from 0.2g to 0.0088g depending if I could separate the layers.

 

After I had recorded all the fresh weights the samples were put into the oven for 24 hours to dry. Then each skin was weighed again to find out the dry weight.

 

Unfortunately when I went to take the onions out of the oven I noticed some of the layers separating so instead of one sample I now had 2 or 3 or in one case 6 samples!

 

 

Altogether I weighed 634 dried skin samples.

So how many of the original fresh samples separated into more layers?

Why was I doing this? It’s an ongoing experiment looking at quality of onions. In this case they are looking at the quality of the skins.

Taking a core sample

weigh each layer of the sample

label each layer of each sample

put the samples into the oven and weigh once dried

4 samples were collected from each onion

the dried onion skins