Farm Plants May Help Fight Infections, Teen Finds

Locklyn Ward is 14 years old. She lives on a farm in Oklahoma. One evening, she helped feed the cows. She saw plants growing in the field. She knew scientists look for new ways to fight infections. So she asked: could plants on her family’s farm kill bacteria?

Locklyn picked 24 plants. Twelve of them were native to Oklahoma. She cut each plant into one-gram pieces. That is about four hundredths of an ounce. Then she boiled the plants. Boiling helped pull out their chemicals. She tested those extracts against two kinds of bacteria. The bacteria were Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus epidermidis. She also tested antibiotics that treat infections.

The test used paper disks. Each disk was soaked in plant extract or antibiotics. Locklyn put the disks into dishes with bacteria. If a plant’s chemicals had antibiotic power, the bacteria around that disk would die.

No farm-plant extract worked as well as current medicines. But 13 of the 24 plants did kill some bacteria. Seven of those plants were native. Locklyn hopes her results may lead to new ways to fight germs. When people overuse antibiotics, bacteria can become harder to kill. So new solutions are needed.

Locklyn did this project as an eighth grader at Grove Middle School in Grove, Okla. Her research made her a finalist in the 2026 Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge. The program is run by Society for Science. That group also publishes Science News Explores. Locklyn shared her science-fair story and advice.