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Irish Girls Win Google Science Fair With Astonishing Crop Yield Breakthrough

Posted by samzenpus on from the growing-better dept.

An anonymous reader writes Irish teenagers Ciara Judge, Émer Hickey and Sophie Healy-Thow, all 16, have won the Google Science Fair 2014. Their project, Combating the Global Food Crisis, aims to provide a solution to low crop yields by pairing a nitrogen-fixing bacteria that naturally occurs in the soil with cereal crops it does not normally associate with, such as barley and oats. The results were incredible: the girls found their test crops germinated in half the time and had a drymass yield up to 74 percent greater than usual.

13 of 308 comments (clear)

  1. This is huge by spiritplumber · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is huge... although we already make enough food to feed 12B people; we throw away a lot of it. Still, efficiency!

    --
    Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
    1. Re:This is huge by lymond01 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It isn't how much we make, it's where we can make it and who can afford it. If something like this can be applied to areas where food is scarce to come by (by any method), good for all of us.

    2. Re:This is huge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      This is normal behavior for a plant inoculated with mycorrhizae; you inoculate the soil with mycorrhizae bacteria and the results are more hardy plants, better nutrient delivery and better handling of dry spells. The webbing produced by the mycorrhizae helps keep soil clumped together better and produces a sponge like mass that holds water better. They also transport nutrients from elsewhere in the soil whereas they would normally flush down with rainwater in exchange for some carbohydrates from the plants roots; plant roots can only really get nutrients dissolved in the water or from soil immediately (within a quarter inch or less). The problem is that anytime the soil is turned you annihilate the local population so you need to inoculate every year with direct contact between the spores and the root mass.

    3. Re:This is huge by dvice_null · · Score: 5, Informative

      Rainforests 28%, oceans 70%, other 2%.

      http://education.nationalgeogr...

    4. Re:This is huge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem is that anytime the soil is turned you annihilate the local population so you need to inoculate every year with direct contact between the spores and the root mass.

      Or, you know, don't turn the soil?

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...

      PS. fuck you slashdot for cutting off all the links.... site is getting more useless everyday...

  2. Wager by kheldan · · Score: 5, Funny

    Five bucks says that before the end of the month, Monsantos' legal department sends them a cease-and-desist order and claims prior art on their accomplishment.

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    Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
    1. Re:Wager by cdrudge · · Score: 5, Funny

      I thought Monsanto owned the rights to Nitrogen as well as the complete genome of oats and barley. This should be a slam dunk case for their lawyers.

    2. Re:Wager by alphatel · · Score: 5, Funny

      Five bucks says that before the end of the month, Monsantos' legal department sends them a cease-and-desist order and claims prior art on their accomplishment.

      Monsanto Letter to USPTO ...infringing on our mark [see attached]...
      Patent "Employee" (working from unknown location on Sept 30th at 11:59 PM): Opens prior art. Enclosed is ASCII drawing of a farmer.
      USPTO Response to Monsanto: Seems Legit.

      --
      When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
  3. The Global Food Crisis is not a science problem by kruach+aum · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's a resource allocation problem. There is enough food on earth right now to sustainably feed everyone, the problem lies with the people on the path from the food to the hungry mouths. Increasing food production increases the wealth of the people in the middle, who now have more resources to allocate, but does not necessarily reduce the number of hungry people.

  4. Re:Which bacteria? by DogDude · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's helpful if you read the fucking article: "We decided to use Rhizobacteria as this was the group specifically mentioned by our science teacher. We used one acidic strain (r.leguminosarum) and one basic strain (r.japonicum)."

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
  5. Re:The kind of science fair my school used to have by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have been a judge at the national level for the Intel Science Fair. If this is like the Intel version these are not just a couple of dorks lost in high school. These are smart kids whose parents are likely highly educated and may well be biologists. The kids I met, though, were able to answer nearly every question thrown at them. They were impressively sharp kids.

  6. Re:Terrific counter to Monsanto's herbicide messag by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nature is amazingly productive when allowed to do her thing, instead of undermined by highly destructive profit-led myopia.

    Is that why our modern crop yields are so much greater than those of our ancestors?

  7. Re:Next step - beer! by dedmorris · · Score: 5, Informative

    Read a Budweiser label. It's made with barley and rice. Many other American beers include "select grains" as well.