Gingers May Have Just Solved World Hunger

OK, that might be a bit of an overstatement, but this is still pretty cool. If you’ve ever made a joke about gingers being soulless devils, then you might have to rethink your views after you learn about Irish teenagers Ciara Judge, Émer Hickey and Sophie Healy-Thow. The 16 year old ginger girls (well, 2 gingers and a blonde) have just been announced as the winners of the 2014 Google Science Fair.

For their project, the girls came up with the idea of trying to pair nitrogen-fixing bacteria that naturally occurs in the soil with cereal crops it does not normally associate with, like barley and oats. The results were pretty amazing. Not only did their test plants germinate in half the time of normal crops, but they had a harvest yield of almost 75% more than the normal plants.

Not bad for a soulless demon.

Now, in the spirit of good fun, here’s Tim Minchin’s Ginger song.