McKinley Garner

PROJECT IN ACTION. Murad and Bhargava turned their small self-sustaining plant pot into a much larger scale project involving a greenhouse.

After their success at the International Science and Engineering (ISEF) Fair in May of 2023, seniors Humza Murad and Rishi Bhargava knew there was more to do with their project. Their original project – an entirely self-sustaining plant pot – lacked scale, but luckily their design allowed room for growth. So when the opportunity arose for them to build a greenhouse for SPA, they leaped and began construction.

The greenhouse design is to “see if we can actually implement this concept in a larger scale system,” Murad said. Their plan is to “have a larger dehumidifier … so you can theoretically grow plants in a greenhouse without any water,” Murad said. The dehumidifier captures water from the surrounding air and then uses it to water the plants.

“Project WASP,” (Watering Autonomously through Sustainable Plant Care Systems) as they call it, works through a “self-watering sustainable plant care system that uses atmospheric water to hydrate and sustain plants,” Murad said. They drew inspiration from already existing self-watering systems, but wanted to make them more efficient.

Right now they are working on upgrading the pump they use to move the water as their current one is not precise enough. Increasing the precision will allow them to grow plants more efficiently.

With this development, they hope to create systems to “autonomously grow multiple species of plants in bulk,” Bhargava said – a level up from the single plant pot that got them to ISEF. The only thing you need to grow the plants will be seeds, dirt and their apparatus – no need to water, no need to make sure it’s in a sunny place, and no need to worry about electricity.

While the project is still in its infancy, the potential for it is immense. Bhargava said, “The potential impact is the greatest for communities facing extreme freshwater scarcity,” and that because their system harvests atmospheric water and solar energy, “the project can potentially provide a stable source of food year-round.”