An Irish student has won the world’s largest agriscience competition at the Alltech Ideas Conference in Kentucky, USA.

Richard Lally, from Prosperous, Co Kildare, is a doctoral postgraduate student at Institute of Technology Carlow’s EnviroCORE (Bioenvironmental Technologies Centre of Research and Enterprise).

The award includes a $10,000 prize and a two-year fully funded postdoctoral contract with global biotechnology company Alltech.

The winning entry – Plant growth promoting Pseudomonads, their colonisation dynamics and agricultural potential – is based on research Richard carried out under the supervision of Institute of Technology Carlow academic research staff Dr David Ryan, Dr David Dowling, Dr Kieran Germaine, Dr Andrew Lloyd and Dr Thomaé Kakouli-Duarte.

It investigates three potential plant growth-promoting Pseudomonas fluorescens strains (L321, L111 and L228) for the application in Brassica napus, an important food and biofuel crop.

The results show that the three strains contained important genes used in the role of plant growth promotion that could be important for use in agriculture.

Finding solutions

“I was thrilled in the first place that our work was selected over every other entry from the Europe/Africa category to make it to the final stage of the competition in Kentucky.

“To win the outright award today is just incredible – a remarkable achievement for our research group. I’m so delighted and thrilled, not just for myself, but for the EnviroCORE team at Institute of Technology Carlow,” said Richard.

Richard’s supervisor, Dr David Ryan, said: “Alltech is a global leader in crop science, animal nutrition and health and so this is an incredible achievement for Richard and EnviroCORE and an acknowledgment of the world-class research being carried out at Institute of Technology Carlow.”