Declan Fahey from Hellyer College, Tasmania, was awarded the 2013 Australian Stockholm Junior Water Prize at the recent AWA National Water Education Conference. Declan impressed the judges with his project on 'Facing the Reality of Groundwater Salinity'. As part of the project, Declan developed and applied exponential functions to model salinity effects on soil water movement in potato {Solanum tuberosum). Modelling was achieved by examination of osmotic movement of water in potato cells in neutral, acidic; and alkaline media, in keeping with possible variations in soil pH. Hypothesising that the effects of salinity on osmotic movement in ' potato tissue would model the effects that salinity might have on root hairs of potato plants, exponential models were designed. This modelling inferred the likelihood of successful large-scale potato production in Tasmanian soils in areas affected by groundwater salinity.
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