Odessa High School student's research on water efficiency taking her to London

Washington Ag Today June 27, 2011An Odessa High School student looking for a year-long chemistry research project began playing around with a chemical she found in the back of the lab’s cabinet and the result is that she is heading to London next month for the London International Youth Science Forum.

Kira Powell, who will be a senior this fall at Odessa, qualified for the London event by recently taking first in Environmental Science at the National Science and Humanities Symposium held in San Diego.

The chemical Powell experimented with was sodium polyacrylate, a non-toxic polymer, commonly found in diapers and which she realized had an application for the dryland agriculture in her community. And that is to improve water use efficiency.

Powell: “It absorbs up to 500 times its weight in water. It is kind of like a reservoir. A reservoir around the seed that the plant can use at anytime. If the roots need the water out of it they can just suck it right out.”

Powell worked with local farmers to see if the polymer improved grain yields, and it did. One application rate boosted yields 22 percent, a higher rate saw a 27 percent increase in bushels per acre. The cost to do that;

Powell: “It would cost about 83-cents an acre to seed for the one application and about $1.62 for the other. So, very cost effective and very easy to apply.”

Powell made a presentation at the Lind Field Day where she greatly impressed farmers and scientists alike.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on Northwest Aginfo Net.

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