BioCapsules: Growing More with Less Water

Grade:

8

Teacher:

ROLANDO BAYARCAL

In hot, dry communities, seedlings often fail because soil dries quickly and irrigation water is limited and costly. This project tested a simple, school-safe biotechnology solution called BioCapsules—alginate beads that encapsulate beneficial root microbes (AMF + PGPR)—to support early tomato growth while reducing water use. The guiding question was: Do BioCapsules reduce irrigation needs while maintaining or improving early growth and root development of tomato seedlings over 28 days? I hypothesized that plants receiving BioCapsules would require less total water than a control group and would show equal or greater growth, with stronger root investment. To test this, Husky Cherry Red tomato seedlings were grown for 28 days under four treatments: Control (no additions), Fertilizer-only, Inoculant-sprinkle (microbes without beads), and BioCapsules (microbes encapsulated and placed at the root zone). Key variables measured included total water used (mL), weekly plant height, leaf/chlorophyll observations, and Day-28 root and shoot mass to calculate root:shoot ratio and water-use efficiency (biomass per liter of water). All plants were kept under the same conditions (soil, pot size, light, location), watering was logged in exact milliliters, and pot positions were rotated to reduce location effects. In this 28-day pilot, BioCapsules showed a clear trend of lower water use with strong early growth, along with higher root investment and better biomass per liter of water compared with the control. These findings suggest BioCapsules can help gardens “grow more with less” by improving root performance where water is most limiting. Next steps include increasing sample size through repeated trials and testing different capsule doses and placement depths to strengthen reliability and scalability for school and home gardens.

Project presentation

Research paper