From science to vegetable growing

Delivering answers to questions: This year’s state contest “Jugend forscht” in Einbeck offered many opportunities to develop ideas – and KWS played a special role in it. Marijan Rygulla’s stand glittered and glimmered – which was no surprise, given that the 14-year-old student’s project deals with the recycling of precious metals, especially gold and copper. “I was interested in chemistry from an early age,” he says. “I then thought about what would make a good project together with my mother and grandmother.”

Because of his mother Sylvia, who works in Governance & Group Standards at KWS, he initially considered something related to saving water in agriculture. Then he came up with the idea of precious metals, because “they’re really only finite resources.”

Environmental issues and helping others have always been important to Marijan, which is why he is a volunteer with the German Federal Agency for Technical Relief in his spare time, among other things. With his project, he wants to develop a more environmentally friendly method of making precious metals reusable. After several experiments, Marijan discovered that a combination of hydrochloric and citric acid works best to remove gold from plug connectors, for example. And he has already thought about how the project could evolve: “For example, you could breed a particularly acidic lemon variety that needs little growing space but is perfect for processes like this,” he says.

Our latest project in Brazil also focuses on growing plants under special conditions and seeding the future. In the megacity of São Paulo, we have established 10 school gardens in collaboration with Cities Without Hunger (Städte ohne Hunger e. V.) to give children who live in precarious circumstances access to fresh vegetables. Salads, peppers, cabbage, red beet, tomatoes, onions, parsley and coriander are now grown there over an area of 100 to 3,000 square meters. In future, fruit trees will also provide shade on hot afternoons, inviting the pupils to linger or play.

“Poorer families in particular often eat one-sided, carbohydrate-based meals because fresh vegetables are very expensive,” explains Bettina Haussmann, who is responsible for our social projects outside Europe. “The school gardens give the children access to completely different vitamins and nutrients, as the vegetables grown there are used in the school canteens.”

Digging the soil, planting seedlings, harvesting their own vegetables as a team – all the children do the work in the garden themselves. “In this way, we can perhaps also inspire more interest in agriculture and get children excited about plants and nutrition,” says Bettina. Around 5,000 of them already have access to fresh vegetables. They include children who have either been orphaned or have fled to Brazil from other countries. This project exemplifies KWS’ social purpose: “Provide expertise, resources and inspiration to generate a social impact from science to farm to fork.”