Ciera Gardner

                                                      

Photo of Ciera with freshly picked blackberries, taken at the Wye Research Facility by Haley Sater on 6/18

Throughout the duration of my internship I have had to use critical thinking to complete many tasks. During my fifth week I utilized critical thinking to organize a taste panel for blackberries. The steps I took to prepare included researching what type of taste panel I was conducting which was descriptive analysis. When I was developing the surveys that participants would be filling out during the panel I had to decide what questions would give me the best idea of what the blackberries tasted like to the participants. While harvesting blackberries I had to pick the best berries that would be ripe with no red to ensure that the participants were getting good berries. At the end of my week I had to weigh biomass samples that were collected on various days throughout the year. Because some of the people didn’t label the bags correctly I had to use critical thinking to decide how I would sort and label each sample when documenting them on the excel sheet. In the future to better complete these tasks I would dedicate myself more to researching how to handle the results of the taste panel and how to reach a conclusion on what the results mean.

Photo of the taste panel set up, taken by Ciera at Wicomico Extension office on 6/21