RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Stu­dents from Na­pari­ma Col­lege un­veiled their ground­break­ing so­lar­pon­ic in­ven­tions dur­ing the school’s sci­ence fair, mark­ing a sig­nif­i­cant step to­wards rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing agri­cul­ture.

The high-tech sys­tems de­vel­oped by the in­no­v­a­tive stu­dents aim to as­sist farm­ers and back­yard kitchen gar­den­ers in en­hanc­ing their cul­ti­va­tion prac­tices.

One no­table in­ven­tion show­cased at the fair was a $60,000 so­lar-pow­ered farm util­i­ty ve­hi­cle, cre­at­ed from a mod­i­fied golf cart, which can be utilised in re­mote farms.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the fair on Fri­day, Form Four stu­dent, Ji­braan Lall, de­scribed the ve­hi­cle as “the newest SUV.”

“This is a ve­hi­cle that can be used on a farm to trans­port ma­te­ri­als and tools and it will be use­ful for re­mote ar­eas where the farmer may not have ac­cess to gaso­line fu­el. It is cost-ef­fi­cient and pow­ered by so­lar en­er­gy. It can car­ry stuff in the car­go bay and it could fit two peo­ple,” he said.

The ve­hi­cle, he ex­plained, is out­fit­ted with two car­bon deep cy­cle bat­ter­ies, and in­vert­ers to con­vert the en­er­gy to be used.

He said a unit like this with the so­lar pan­el set up costs them $60,000.

“We as­sem­bled this,” he said proud­ly as his col­leagues ap­plaud­ed.

David Williams, al­so a Form Four stu­dent, said the fair al­lowed stu­dents to show­case their cre­ativ­i­ty and ed­u­cate them­selves on var­i­ous top­ics. His team ex­plored fruit sci­ence.

“Food se­cu­ri­ty in our coun­try is a prob­lem and we have to work to­geth­er to find so­lu­tions,” Williams said.

Hema Jag­ger­nauth, the act­ing head of the Sci­ence De­part­ment, said the fair was themed Food Sci­ence.

“The Form One stu­dents talked about agro-pro­cess­ing, Form Two stu­dents spoke about food chem­istry, Form Three did food physics and the use of so­lar in agro-pro­cess­ing and our Form Four stu­dents did the chem­istry, bi­ol­o­gy and physics as­so­ci­at­ed with food agro-pro­cess­ing,” she ex­plained.

The stu­dents’ in­ven­tions gar­nered praise from Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion School su­per­vi­sor Jas­mine Ra­moutar, who em­pha­sised the glob­al food cri­sis and the sig­nif­i­cance of the knowl­edge gained through the fair.

“As we all know, we are fac­ing a food cri­sis in the world to­day and the knowl­edge you gained from this ex­pe­ri­ence and this fair cer­tain­ly will take us far in food pro­duc­tion, if you con­tin­ue in your field. I look for­ward to see­ing how you ap­ply sci­ence and physics in re­al-world sce­nar­ios,” she said.

Prin­ci­pal Roger Ali al­so com­mend­ed the stu­dents for their in­no­va­tion say­ing the school was proud of their ac­com­plish­ments.

As­sist­ing the stu­dents with their projects was in­dus­tri­al en­gi­neer An­cel Bhag­wan­deen, who in­tro­duced them to his own in­ven­tion, the so­lar­pon­ics tow­er gar­den sys­tem.

Bhag­wan­deen said this sys­tem, equipped with a 12-volt so­lar pan­el and a so­lar pow­er dig­i­tal brain, utilis­es cli­mate-adap­tive in­tel­li­gence. It can con­nect to cell­phones for da­ta log­ging and en­ables in­di­vid­u­als to achieve food se­cu­ri­ty at home.