Indian Origin Kiara Nirghin wins 2016 Google Science Fair Prize

Indian-origin South African girl Kiara Nirghin on 1 October 2016 won the Google Science Fair prize 2016. 
●    She won this grand prize of 50000 US dollars scholarship for using orange peel to develop a cheaper super-absorbent material that helps soil retain water.
●    Kiara Nirghin is a Grade 11 student at St Martin’s private school. She did a project titled No More Thirsty Crops which was aimed at tackling the severe drought plaguing South Africa. 
●    Her solution to the problem of drought uses orange and avocado fruit peel, which are normally discarded.
●    The Google Science Fair is a programme for budding scientists between the ages of 13 to 18, who are invited to solve the world’s biggest challenges using science and technology.
●    The fruit peel serves perfect alternative to super-absorbent polymers (SAPs), which absorb and carry about 300 times their weight in liquid relative to their own mass.
●    These SAPs are not biodegradable, are costly and full of acrylic acid, sodium hydroxide and other chemicals.