LGP25B3 - Peering into a Potato!

Jun 07, 2025 • 4:55 PM UTC

India

340x Magnification

Plants

Karthik Agarwal

Hi! I'm a student from India, currently studying in 10th grade (ICSE board).

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The potato is such a versatile vegetable. It is even known as the king of vegetables due to the wide range of ways it can be used in the kitchen. But have we ever wondered, what lies underneath the surface of this everyday food item?

At a magnification of 50X, we get our first glimpse of potato flesh cells. They are clustered together, with some overlap visible. The cells are oval in shape, and are transparent too. The cell walls are thin.

Zooming in further, at a magnification of 140X, we can see there are large intercellular spaces between the cells. As compared to the onion skin sample I examined earlier, where the cells were packed so tightly together that they looked like a brick wall, these potato flesh cells are quite different. Another comparison could be drawn between the cell sizes. In the onion skin sample, the cells were largely uniform in shape and structure. Here, we see a lot more variation in cell size and shape, with certain irregularities coming to light at this magnification.

At 340X magnification, we begin to see some texture within some of the cells. We can observe granules that are most probably starch granules.

With this sample, it was very interesting to see how the cells, their arrangements, and their structures, compared to those of the onion skin. Both onion and potato are vegetables that are staple parts of our diets, but the differences at a cellular level are astronomical!