Rye Lynn Rost
7th Grade, Baker Junior High School
Baker, MT
Musa acuminata and Musa paradisiaca Mashup: Developing Higher Resistant Starch Bioplastics
Rye compared plantain and bananas to find which would make the better bioplastic. She counted amyloplasts – cells that make starch – in each fruit and extracted their starch. She then made bioplastic and compared their strength. Rye showed plantains had more starch and made better bioplastic.
View Poster
Project Background
“While there are many issues in the world that we can use STEM to solve, plastic pollution is the one that concerns me the most,” Rye says. She wanted to create better bioplastics—plastics made from natural materials that could break down. But while bioplastics do need to break down, Rye didn’t want them to break down too fast. “Bioplastics must withstand water, sunlight, and other environmental conditions without breaking down or losing durability,” she says. She decided to compare bioplastic from plantains (Musa Paradisiaca) and bioplastic from bananas (Musa acuminata).
Tactics and Results
Plantains and bananas are very closely related, but plantains have thicker skin and more starch. Rye decided to compare plantain and banana amyloplasts, cells in the plants that make and store starch. She extracted individual cells from bananas and plantains and counted the amyloplasts from 100 cells each. Then, she extracted the start from bananas and plantains and measured the amount of starch per gram. Finally, she made bioplastic from both fruits and compared it to plastic parafilm. Rye found that plantains had the highest number of amyloplasts and the most starch. She also tested the bioplastics for strength and stretch. The plantain bioplastic had higher tensile strength and breaking distance, making it a stronger plastic than the banana.
Beyond the Project
Rye is a member of 4H, and has shown a cow, goat, cat, pig and poultry at the fair. She takes care of 14 goats and has helped train both cows and pigs. Rye has high-frequency hearing loss, and wears hearing aids. “Everyone was worried that I would do badly in school, but I have gotten straight As my whole life,” she says. She wants to be a materials scientist. “My dream is to make better bioplastics,” she says. “I want to make the perfect recipe for different types of single-use plastics.”
