Research Project I

I am going to start my research project.
However, laboratory will not start very soon. Perhaps around next year 2011, which is two months from now.

My project is regarding functional characterization of underutilised tropical fruit.
The fruit that I have choosen is soursop, which is also known as durian belanda.

For those that doesn't know what is the fruit looks like, you can take a look at below.



There are a lot of things need to do although lab work is still not yet begun.
I need to do literature review and some preparations on proposal.
I also required to find out a whole list of the chemicals and instrumentation need for the research purpose.
And, I also need to find where I can purchase the fruit. Hopefully, place likes Tesco or Jusco got selling this kind fruit.

Compared to my undergraduate research project, this time the period of research on lab is relatively short. I have only 4 months to do my research. Fortunately, this research is quite easily to obtain the result, the only difficult thing is to get the optimum result.

Even though the laboratory work is only 4 months, I am actually do quite a lot of works on literature reading. The methodology of the research need to find myself which is a challenge to me as I am not from food science and chemistry background.

In this project, I need to do several chemical assays to find out the functional properties of the fruit. The chemical assays (methodology and theory) need to find by myself, without any clues from supervisor and friends. My supervisor just gave me a very brief background of the research. Many things still need to be searched by myself. So, it highly depends on me what I want to do in this research.

Besides, I do not have any postgraudate students or RA to guide me as the research is new in nottingham. I feel I am finding a much sufferer pathway compared to other MSc students. T^T


The environment of the laboratory is quite different because it mixed with the teaching laboratory. Really not so like it because we cannot stay all the time at the lab due to the classes might be held.

I am kinda worried for the short laboratory period, and also the outcome of the research. I feel my research not enough to qualify as a master degree level. But my supervisor feels satisfy for my propose idea.

Well, I think I just try my best.

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后记：挑战自己写英文部落。但，还是比较喜欢写中文的文章。开始了研究，担心忧虑跟着来。希望我的研究顺顺利利。