Teagasc Special Award at BTYSTE 2018
The Teagasc special award at BTYSTE 2018 was presented to Darragh Twomey, Neil O’Leary and Andrew Heffernan, transition year Students at Colaiste Treasa, Kanturk, Co. Cork for their project entitled ‘Feeding 9.6 billion people by 2050 – the effects of Pseudomonas flourescens L321 endophyte on enhancing barley crop yield’.
The Teagasc award is presented to the project that best demonstrates a thorough understanding of the science of agricultural or food production, or the use of science to improve technologies available to agricultural or food production.
The Teagasc special award at BTYSTE 2018 was presented to Darragh Twomey, Neil O’Leary and Andrew Heffernan, transition year students at Colaiste Treasa, Kanturk, Co. Cork for their project entitled ‘Feeding 9.6 billion people by 2050 – the effects of Pseudomonas flourescens L321 endophyte on enhancing barley crop yield’. The students were also group runners up overall and also won the Perrigo Student Award and, in addition, were selected to attend the BT Business Bootcamp at UCD to investigate further opportunities for their findings. The students were in the Biological and Ecological Sciences category at Intermediate level. All three students are from farming families (dairy and drystock).
Motivated by a need to produce more food to feed an increasing world population, they carried out a field study to increase food production in a sustainable manner. The students looked at an inexpensive method for improving crop yields using bacteria found naturally occurring in plants called endophytes. The strain of endophyte of interest in this project was Pseudomonas fluorescence L321 which is found on Miscanthus giganteus (elephant grass), this offers the plant an improved acquisition of phosphorus. The student’s project investigated the effect of P. fluorescence on spring barley crop yield with the aim of reducing costs for tillage farmers. They treated barley seed with a specific strain of bacteria and found it increased the yield of varieties of the crop. They then carried out field trials with five different varieties (80 plots) and found the greatest increase in yield with the variety Planet, giving an economic value of €416.33/ha.
The students worked with John Spink, Head of the Crops Research Department at Teagasc Oak Park Crops Environment and Land Use Research Centre, Carlow and Dr Kieran Germaine, lecturer in Biosciences at Carlow IT throughout the project. John Spink explains: “The students worked extremely hard throughout the six months with great enthusiasm and attention to detail. Their success is well deserved”.
This year an impressive 2,031 projects from 4,251 students across the island of Ireland were entered, with every county represented by a submission. Over 60% of entrants were female and the highest ever number of entries from DEIS schools, a positive indication of the power of this platform to engage participation in the critical Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) subjects.
The Teagasc award is presented to the project that best demonstrates a thorough understanding of the science of agricultural or food production, or the use of science to improve technologies available to agricultural or food production.
Dr Frank O’Mara, Director of Research in Teagasc, said that Teagasc is proud to support BTYSTE: “We all benefit from raising students’ awareness of the importance of STEM careers and the career opportunities from taking STEM courses”.
The Teagasc stand at BTYSTE 2018, during January 11-13 featured a number of experiments carried out by research and education staff and visitors to the stand were asked to use the interactive stand to give their ideas on technologies for the future of farming and food.