Fruit and Vegetable DNA

[MelissaB]

I don't have a hypothesis for which would have more, because I haven't done enough background reading. What I would do is look up what sorts of plants we get vegetables and fruits come from, and then see how many copies of each chromosome the various plant groups have. My own hypothesis is that I would extract more DNA from plants with more copies of each chromosome.

As for the comparison, you compared citrus fruits with other fruits and decided that citrus fruits had more DNA, right? You do exactly the same sort of comparison between your fruits and vegetables. Or, is there variation in your sample? Do some fruits have more DNA than the vegetables and other fruits have less? Let us know what your results were and we can try to help .

[brianneoldridge]

Is this good? Cause our science fair is tomorrow...?
Results:
The results were unpredictable. It ended up that the fruits did have more DNA than the vegetables but not by far. For the different types of fruits and vegetables, the Tropical and Exotic with banana and mango did the best, looking at what ranking they came in and if it beat the vegetable it was against. But when it comes to seeing which fruit or vegetable has the most DNA, it would be Plum because it had the most DNA out of all the fruits and when we compared it to the vegetable that had the most DNA out of all the vegetables, the Plum had more.

We took a look at the tests that we did and we ordered the fruits and the vegetables from the most amount of DNA to the least. We did this by what we thought looked like had more or less DNA. Then we compared the 1 fruit and the 1 vegetable with the same ranking to see which had more DNA. Below is our ranking from the most amount of DNA to the least with the comparison between the fruits and vegetables.

Fruit Rankings Vegetable Rankings
1. Plum  1. Lettuce
2. Banana  2. Cabbage
3. Strawberry 3. Zucchini 
4. Orange  4. Garlic
5. Honeydew Melon  5. Celery
6. Mango  6. Cucumber
7. Watermelon  7. Onion
8. Kiwi 8. Yam 
9. Peach 9. Potato 
10. Lime 10. Asparagus 
11. Apple  11. Broccoli
12. Pear 12. Spinach 
 = Won Against the Same Rank
7/12 5/12

Total Ranking
Fruit and Vegetable Ranking

1. Plum
2. Lettuce
3. Banana
4. Cabbage
5. Zucchini
6. Strawberry
7. Orange
8. Garlic
9. Honeydew Melon
10. Celery
11. Mango
12. Cucumber
13. Watermelon
14. Onion
15. Yam
16. Kiwi
17. Potato
18. Peach
19. Asparagus
20. Lime
21. Apple
22. Broccoli
23. Spinach
24. Pear

Also they are in colours that determine what type of fruit/vegetable that they are but it doesnt show on here. And they are in tables.

[MelissaB]

I'm not sure if I'm too late or not, but this looks great! It's definitely an interesting result. Remember, your results are your results--they don't have to match your hypothesis for the experiment to be a good one!

Congratulations on the successful science fair project, and if you haven't already presented, good luck at the fair!

[DNAbasics]

Hi!

I am also actually doing a similar experiment and I was also stuck on the same problem, finding an objective until I saw this post. Since I am also using the same problem, it would help if I knew what fruits and vegetables you used. So far, i am planning to use Strawberries, however, I don't know what other fruits and vegetables to use...I am planning to use 3 types of fruits, and 3 types of vegetables. So I hope you can help me!

[deleted-71884]

Hi DNAbasics,

You should use any type of vegetable or fruit you like. It really does not matter because in the long run, the most interesting research project for you will be the one that incoporates the DNA content of the fruits and vegetables you like.

Hope that helps!

-Sam

[DNAbasics]

Hi,

Thanks for the help, I picked strawberries, pears, kiwi, cucumbers, potato and lettuce. I am planning to use 30 grams of fruit and vegetables and i am doing 3 trials for each however, I do not know how much fruit and vegetables I should buy, hope you can help me on this!