The Sprout Report: A Scientific Journey to End Food Insecurity

After deciding to use seed coating with Bacillus subtilis , the next step was to choose a specific strain. After extensive research and searching for a supplier that could provide the exact strain we needed(shocking, nobody wants to sell bacteria to high schoolers), we ultimately selected Bacillus subtilis OKB105.This specific strain produces spermidine, a compound made up of two or more amino groups, which plays two important roles in plant growth. The first being promoting the production of Expansin, a protein which makes cell walls less rigid. Increased fluidity allows for an increase in turgor pressure, enabling cells to expand and grow. Once a cell reaches a certain size, it hits a threshold, which signals cell division. The second benefit of OKB105 is its ability to reduce ethylene production. Ethylene is a hormone associated with plant stress, fruit ripening, and aging. High ethylene levels prevent root elongation, while lower levels promote an increase in vegetation. In my pre...

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of ups and downs. Our first idea, as I mentioned in the last post, was to take a soil sample, preform a PCR analysis to identify different types of bacteria present, and then test for their antagonistic activity against harmful pathogens. But as we started researching, we quickly hit some major roadblocks—PCR is expensive, and even if we did it, we wouldn’t actually have any bacteria to work with afterward. That meant we wouldn’t be able to do anything with the data. This idea was pretty much impossible from the start. Our next idea was to run soil tests to check for key markers that beneficial bacteria could help fix. One of our main focuses was nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which convert elemental nitrogen from the air into a form plants can use. Instead of using PCR to count the bacteria, we figured we could just measure the nitrogen levels in the soil, which would give us a good estimate of how much nitrogen-fixing bacteria was present. The plan...