Bugs Away! Epazote-Infused Cassava-Sargassum Bioplastic as Active Packaging to Repel Flour Beetles

Grade:

9

Teacher:

Alfred Santos

Plastic contamination is becoming one of the world’s major environmental issues, along side food loss and impurity due to multiple factors. Our goal with our experiments was to address both problems, reducing pollution, and protecting food from flour beetles. We wanted to reflect our culture in this project, which is why we used cassava and epazote as our main components for our bioplastic. Our project uses cassava and epazote, both of which are a huge part of Mexican culture. These 2 however when combined, form a powerful combination if used correctly. Epazote has very good antimicrobial properties, when used in moderation, helps against flour beetle infestations. Additionally, cassava has starch that is biodegradable, which can be used as a bioplastic. Together, they form the cassava starch based bioplastic that’s capable of repelling flour beetles. We tested 2 types of bioplastic: one with epazote infused into it and another one without it. They were both det into an artificial monitored environment. The plastic with the epazote infusion significantly outperformed the one without epazote, seeing very little flour lost one the one with epazote compared to the one without it. The results represent how well epazote can work to repel flour beetles. This is supported by the calculated p-values of 0.0016, which means the results of the epazote infusion are significant and efficient. In overall, our experiments were successful, and demonstrated an impressive performance, which could contribute to better food conservation technologies.

Project presentation

Research paper