Guides · ISEF category
Plant Sciences
ISEF category PLNT · difficulty for high-school students: low
Botany, plant physiology, plant genetics, plant pathology, agricultural science, plant ecology, and plant-microbe interactions.
How it's judged
ISEF scores 100 points across five criteria:
- Creative Ability: 30 pts
- Scientific Thought: 30 pts
- Thoroughness: 15 pts
- Skill: 15 pts
- Clarity: 10 pts
What wins
- Investigating plant stress responses at the molecular level (drought, salt, heat)
- Plant-microbe symbiosis: novel fungal or bacterial strains promoting growth
- GWAS using public Arabidopsis datasets to find stress-response genes
- Phytoremediation efficiency of novel plant species or cultivars for specific contaminants
- Epigenetic regulation of plant responses to environmental stress
Common mistakes
- Effect of music / color of light / different water on plant growth — extremely overdone
- Not controlling for soil composition, watering volume, and light uniformly across groups
- Using n=1 plant per treatment group
- Not reporting which species or cultivar was used
What you'll need
Growth chamber or greenhouse (controlled conditions), analytical balance, spectrophotometer for chlorophyll assays. Molecular work requires PCR machine and university lab.
Ethics & approvals
Human-subjects (IRB) approval is usually not required for this category. Vertebrate-animal (IACUC) approval is usually not required.
The novelty bar
A specific, unstudied compound, stress condition, or genetic variant in a relevant plant system. Any study involving only 'does X affect plant growth' without a mechanistic hypothesis is not competitive.
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