Altering the taste of plants and vegetables
1 LIACS, Leiden University, Niels Bohrweg 1, Leiden, The Netherlands
roy@bijster.com, wiyay@jharap.nl, schietop@hotmail.com, xanderwitteveen@hotmail.com
Abstract. We are living in an age where it is completely normal and widely accepted to genetically enhance pretty much everything that carries a genome. Taste is one of those elements that is often genetically altered in order to make food more attractive. One might wonder if there aren’t any possibilities to alter taste by means of sprouting vegetables naturally by adding taste substrates to the soil.
1. Introduction
Scientific breakthroughs are often made by people who dare to think outside of renowned patterns, using research methods that are considered unconventional by the standard research community. Sometimes using unconventional research methods this can yield unforeseen results that could not be envisioned or achieved otherwise. There are different research methods that can help a scientist to carry out research in a more creative way of which ‘creating by doing’ is the most appealing and strongly supported method to use in the case of the MSc Mediatechnology.
An often mentioned saying goes; ‘You are what you eat’. This saying is used to implicate that one looks like, smells like or tastes like the substances that he or she often eats and is thus used to confirm certain preconceptions (e.g. Turkish people smell like garlic, American people are fat because they eat hamburgers and fries).
Does the saying; ‘You are what you eat’ also apply to plants and vegetables in the way it applies to human beings? It is known that some flower-species change the color of their leaves according to color-pigments in the seedbed. This raises the question if it would also be possible to alter the taste of plants if the feeding soil is being enriched with taste enhancers.
Hypothesis
It is our presumption that plants will inherit and alter their taste if the soil that is fed upon is enhanced with taste extracts.
3. Method of research
Taste can be described as a holistic assessment of the interaction between a substance and the tongue. The actual sense of tasting takes place by chemo-receptors placed on the tongue, often referred to as taste-buds. Humans are able to distinguish five basic tastes; sweet, sour, bitter, salt, and umami (spicy, piquant)1.
Garden Cress is known for its short germination time and makes it an ideal species to examine the possibilities of taste inheritance in relation to feeding soil. Under normal environmental conditions, Garden Cress grows best on a bed of wetted wadding without the use of any manure or fertilizer. It will take approximately five to seven days before the plant can be considered edible. Garden Cress distinctively has got a peppery, tangy flavor and aroma2.
The Garden Cress is being sprouted on wadding, wetted with different substrates that match the tastes that can be distinguished by human beings as mentioned before. The research scenario will study the growth procedure of Garden Cress on the following substrates:
Water (neutral)
Cola (sweet)
Orange soda (sour)
Ketjap (salt)
Beer (bitter)
Sambal (umami)
To persuade and maintain that the environmental influences are identical at any time during the germination period of the Garden Cress, the individual substrates will be placed in one and the same testing box, each in a different compartment. When the sprouting process of the Garden Cress has been completed randomly picked subjects (e.g. age, gender, social background etc.) will determine if the taste of the Garden Cress has been influenced by the feeding soil by matters of a blind testing procedure. The subjects will be given sufficient time to neutralize there taste before the next enhanced Garden Cress is being served.
After all individual specimens of Garden Cress have been tested, the gathered data will be computed our gathered data to examine if altering the taste of plants and vegetables is actually possible by matters of enhanced soil substrates.
4. Results
We started this research with the hypothesis, that plants will inherit and alter their taste if the soil contains taste extracts. The time span of this research will be set to a limiting period of seven days. After this period the Garden Cress will be tested on subject if the hypothesis would be true.
After the Garden Cress seeds where put in the compartments, it was clear that the seeds in the neutral environment did only show some progress in growth. Sambal was a bit slow and the rest of the seeds were not showing any growth. To illustrate the growth of the seeds, pictures were taken of each compartment during the process3. A brief summary of these illustrated test results can be found in the appendix. Because of the fact that not al the seeds did sprout it was not possible to validate if the Garden Cress did adopt the flavor of the individual substrates. The results acquired from the research carried out leads to the assumption that Garden Cress has a strong preference to sprout and grow in water, a result that that wasn’t accounted for in the hypothesis. Substrates like Cola, Orange Soda, Ketjap, Beer and Sambal are not suitable for sprouting Garden Cress or the mixture of the substrates consisted out insufficient quantities of water. Although the seeds in some of the substrates were showing signs of germination, they never grew out to full grown Garden Cress.
Another interesting though destructive observation has been done on the fifth day of sprouting the Garden Cress. The Garden Cress was showing signs of fungus contamination. Although precautions had been taken to insure that the research setting could not be contaminated from the outside, it wasn’t taken into account that fungus could actually develop inside of the research setting. The different compartments in our test box were not concealed which enabled fungus to spread rapidly, contaminating one substrate to another.
5. Evaluation & conclusion
As the events presented in the last paraphrase of the previous chapter would normally be a disaster for most researchers, we found this pretty interesting and let the fungus continue its way, to see if interesting data could be gathered from this process. Since our initial research question and hypothesis can not be verified, it is wise to reflect upon our findings to determine which things could be done differently may we want to consider carrying out a similar research in the future. Subsequent to this event we asked ourselves the following follow-up research question; Which soil substrate would be the least sufficient to provide plant growth on?
Although we haven’t been able to verify the hypothesis that plants will inherit and alter their taste if the soil is enhanced with taste extracts, we have been able to conclude that Garden Cress has a preference for water rich soil. The substrates used in this research consisted of insufficient quantities of water to stimulate growth. Moreover high quantities of sodium substances (salty taste) in the soil cause Garden Cress seeds not to show any signs of germination what so ever.
6. References
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/garden_cress
7. Appendix
Water Day 1..3 Day 4..6 Cola Day 1..3 Day 4..6 Orange Day 1..3 Day 4..6 Ketjap Day 1..3 Day 4..6 Beer Day 1..3 Day 4..6 Sambal Day 1..3 Day 4..6
