Irish teens' backyard find: nitrogen bacteria can boost cereal crops
A pea plant pulled from a Kinsale garden led three schoolgirls to a three-year home experiment challenging expert consensus on cereal farming.
What to know
- Three schoolgirls in Kinsale, Ireland, tested whether nitrogen-fixing rhizobium bacteria, normally confined to legumes, could benefit staple cereals.
- Experts had told them the bacteria would have no impact on cereals; their own three-year, ~13,000-seed home experiment contradicted that consensus.
- Treated barley and oats showed up to 50 percent faster germination and up to 74 percent more dry mass in their trials.
- The finding touches a long-standing agricultural limitation: wheat, barley and rice cannot naturally host the nitrogen-fixing bacteria legumes use.
Émer Hickey co-discoverer, then early teensCiara Judge co-researcher, then early teensSophie Healy-Thow co-researcher, then early teens
The record 1 articles and posts · last 26 days
What people are saying 15 voices from 1 site · verbatim
- Sep 3
-
I've put that older yahoo.com link at the top since it seems to be the original source. Thanks!(Submitted URL was https://scienceblog.com/b-three-schoolgirls-in-kinsale-pulle... and I think we'll ban that site.)
-
Unbelievably I read this news while visiting Cork. Went to Kinsale yesterday. Never been to Ireland before. What a coincidence!
-
Leaving aside the issues with this version of the story, it does demonstrate the value of teaching scientific method properly. Its very easy to teach the discoveries of science but neglect the method (hint for British people, get your kids to do GCSE astronomy, its better than the usual trio for this).It also shows the importance of questioning…
-
> This content is from 2014-15; perhaps they AI-rehashed the Yahoo! News story about them?I went into the article with the HN submissions’s “(2016)” in my head and was shocked that it kept triggering my AI detector senses. It even checks all of the boxes for the phrases like “One honest footnote”. Had me questioning my ability to detect AI…
-
Rhizobacteria are not known to colonize the roots of cereal crops, typically only only legumes. You would think that scientists would spend more effort trying to create "super" rhizobacteria that can colonize even more aggressively and also fix many times more nitrogen than ordinary ones. I cannot say this one below has independent reviews by well…
-
The Stripe Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition (formerly the BT Young Scientist) is Ireland's biggest school science competition, held every year in Dublin.The winners are often kids whose parents happen to be experts in some domain.There are certainly some genuinely bright kids in the mix, but it feels a bit unfair on those who don't have…
-
Thank you so much for this. Turned an article I was annoyed about (for AI speak) into an amazing story again.
-
From their about pagehttps://scienceblog.com/about-us/"Every published piece is editorially directed and reviewed before it goes live. We use AI tools in research, drafting, and editing. Editors decide what claims, framing, and pieces make it to publish."
-
Refreshing to see there are other outcomes than asking AI what it is these days.
-
Is the letter 'g' designed to appear as if the bottom loop is missing, or is that a rendering error on my end?
-
Definitely AI written, though it got the point across and it wasn't terrible to read and it was new information to me so I was glad to read it.At this point what news site isn't AI written? Except for the few remaining human blogs (which are a delight and a pleasure). Why I detected AI: it said "The honest footnote.." at the end. That's how Claude…
-
Using nitrogen-fixing bacteria is not a new concept and it's the life's work of Dr Mariangela Hungria, who recently received the 2025 World Food Prize for her achievements in the field:
-
Cool a science blog! But it's a rehashed article, followed by an infinite amount of random Taboola scams, arbitrage posts, clickbait articles with jarring content.Why does shit like that work better than quality contextual advertising?
-
This content is from 2014-15; perhaps they AI-rehashed the Yahoo! News story about them?https://www.yahoo.com/news/16-old-girls-win-google-science-f...They posted a video summarizing their efforts in 2014:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL9N7O0uJoUVice did an interview in 2016:https://www.vice.com/en/article/these-teenagers-science-proj...Ciara…
-
I thought this was going to be an eats, shoots, and leaves style discussion.A wart-covered pea plant is what they refer to (near Cork, Ireland)