3. Results and discussion
We observed that the ice crystals distribution data
depended notably on the microscope magnification.
Although the small crystals had a great importance, theywere not taken into account satisfactorily, particularly,
due to the low maximum magnification ofour stereomicroscope.
For the lower magnification, the ice crystals
average diameter was higher than the corresponding
values obtained with higher magnification. Finally, to
avoid artefacts due to image analysis limitations, we
adopted and kept for all the experiments analyses, the
same image magnification, namely X ¼ 100; except in
the case oftoo large ice crystals sizes.