16-Year-Old Irish Girls Win Google Science Fair 2014 With World-Changing Crop Yield Breakthrough

16-Year-Old Irish Girls Win Google Science Fair 2014 With World-Changing Crop Yield Breakthrough

Link: Inhabitat.com

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.

More info: Independent.ie

Experts believe the commercial applications of their discovery are absolutely enormous.

“It has been an absolutely fantastic couple of months,” Ciara admitted.

Their top prize for winning the US title in California is a €30,000 scholarship from Google and an all-expenses paid field study trip to the Galapagos Islands

Kids these days, pretty awesome work girls!

Plenty of details in the article(s).

Monsanto just filed adoption paperwork.

absolutely amazing ,in the article you have linked it says they have been offered space training any chance these girls are wanted for a off world colony ,,

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

Monsanto just filed adoption paperwork.

BRILLIANT!

Amazing, these young kids are inventing new ways to thrive while all the old dinosaurs running this planet see it as becoming outnumbered.

originally posted by: eisegesis
Amazing, these young kids are inventing new ways to thrive while all the old dinosaurs running this planet see it as becoming outnumbered.

I think they are doing this in many areas of life.

Maybe the old folks can stop blaming kids for the world's problems at some point (world is changing, it's gonna happen, don't be scared folks...)

I've said this before...

There is a saying about farmers.

Good farmers grow food.

Great farmers grow dirt.

When I first ventured into discovering how green my thumb was, I didn't fully understand what this meant.

Growing food and any crop is really not that hard to do. The one thing you always hear people say is "Get good soil..." without giving it any thought of what it means. If you buy good soil, you can plant just about anything, give it sunlight and water and it will grow.

To be a great farmer, you need not care too much about what you are growing as much as the condition of the soil it grows in. The bacteria and organisms that live in the soil (not worms), like microrrhizae and rhizobia, are what provide the mechanisms for the breakdown of nutrients and minerals into soluble forms that the plants roots can uptake. Fostering the growth of this and understanding the mechanics and biology of it is incredibly important in growing healthy food. Compost teas can help create the bacteria in a rapid fashion and then used to boost the bacteria in the soil. These are natural, inexpensive ways to get a lot of food for your land.

If you keep the soil healthy, you can continue to grow food in the same soil almost indefinitely. You have to rotate crops properly, which is also part of understanding the soil biology, which is the reason why you have to rotate crops.

Good soil makes for very strong yields and can even protect your crops from insects. For example, apple farmers have used magnesium to make the skins of apples more impervious to insects and worms. Is it bulletproof, no... but it's come a long way.

So instead of turning off water (our wonderful government) to one of the most fertile lands in the country (San Jaquin Valley) because of a tiny smelt fish, so that the food supply can be reduced and prices increased for the benefit of a few...

With the right science and the right people behind it, we could easily feed the entire world for a long time to come.

But why cure the disease when you can get rich fighting the symptoms...

~Namaste

a reply to: Elton

Maybe the old folks can stop blaming kids for the world's problems at some point (world is changing, it's gonna happen, don't be scared folks...)

I don't see anyone blaming kids for the world's problems.

Most of us who are mature enough and intelligent enough understand fully where the responsibility lies.... We are all both the victims and the perpetrators of a world gone awry.

I use FOXFARM soil and get amazing results. In my opinion, it's one of the best. They have great soil conditioners too. Not much different than what these girls are doing.

Is this an old story? It seems like a rehash. Wasn't something like nitrogen producing bacteria or some vitamin producing bacteria for plants already discovered by someone else awhile ago?

Anyone else remember that?

Edit: Nvm, it was something different. I guess. World changing Technology Enables Crops to Take Nitrogen from the Air

a reply to: Elton

I wonder if this will work with cannabis? Increased dry yields. Yea baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

originally posted by: eisegesis

I use FOXFARM soil and get amazing results. In my opinion, it's one of the best. They have great soil conditioners too. Not much different than what these girls are doing.

Have you ever used an inert medium? Such as coconut coir?

originally posted by: stuthealien
absolutely amazing ,in the article you have linked it says they have been offered space training any chance these girls are wanted for a off world colony ,,

Damn skippy - Planet Dirt doesn't have nitrogen fixing bacteria. The soil is nitrogen poor, and you have to fertilize Earth vegetation, but it costs about $10K a kilo to transport it. So they've been doing it the old-fashioned way with clover, alfalfa and rotation. Nice if you could just inoculate the truck farm.

I have planted peas and cabbages together, ended up with cabbage heads the size of basketballs. I knew peas add nitrogen to the soil and that cabbages need lots of nitrogen, great companion plants.

That said what these girls did was ingenious!

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

Monsanto just filed adoption paperwork.

Well,as this breakthrough allows much bigger yeilds without GMO technology,they would probably rather file hitman papers..
Or they would buy her out,and patent the technology themselves,then bury it as it does not fill plants and crops up with their glyphosate crap.

a reply to: Silcone Synapse

It was a joke, not really supposed to over-think those things.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Understood AM,so was my reply(the hitman part anyway).

a reply to: Silcone Synapse

No worries.

*raises a beer made from GMO hops*

a reply to: eisegesis

They don't want the 99% to be fed (That was their most recent excuse) they want the 99% gone.

a reply to: VforVendettea

Erm... you do realize that killing 99% of a population would collapse it back into the stone age? What exactly would be the point of that again?