Kiara Nirghin, a 16-year-old South African schoolgirl, won the grand prize at Google’s Science Fair for developing low-cost, biodegradable superabsorbent polymers (SAP) made out of orange peels. Nirghin’s submission, “Fighting drought with fruit,” beat students from around the world for a $50,000 scholarship.

Nirghin’s innovation was in response to South Africa’s 2015 drought – the country’s lowest ever rainfall since 1904. Last year, the country only received an average of 403mm if rainfall, just 66% of the annual average rainfall, according to her submission. The drought has led to strains on crops and other food sources, and she sought to answer the question, “Is it possible to create a low-cost, biodegradable and organically cross-linked SAP out of orange peels, that can retain large amounts of water, keep soil moist and improve crop growth without regular water supplements?”

Nirghin experimented with waste products from the juice-manufacturing industry, which included molecules found in orange peels and naturally occurring oils found in avocado skins, to develop an orange peel mixture as an alternative to expensive, non-biodegradable SAP. 

She concluded, “The product is fully biodegradable, low-cost and has better water retaining properties than commercial SAPs. The only resources involved in the creation of the ‘orange peel mixture’ were electricity and time, no special equipment nor materials were required.”

Nirghin said she hoped her innovation would help farmers save both money and their crops.