Agriculture Science Projects Ideas
Just a Mouse Click Away

For students who are hunting for science fair topics, the USDA Agricultural Research Service has made the search a little easier. A new set of project ideas is available on "Science for Kids" at www.ars.usda.gov/is/kids. Click on the yellow "More" button in the lower right corner to reach the science projects section.

The Science for Kids site has a general "how to do a science project" section. It explains basic steps of a research project and how research differs from a simple demonstration of a scientific principle.

Agriculture is much more than a cow in a field or seeds dropped in the dirt. In fact, agriculture is grounded in scientific research that fits into many of the traditional science groupings, such as biology, botany, chemistry, environmental sciences, and nutrition.

One of the most popular of the project ideas has been one questioning how much of the essential mineral iron can be found in various breakfast cereals. This topic comes under the category of post-harvest food processing and is certainly a part of agriculture. One Texas 5th grader used the idea and won top honors in her 4th-6th grade science fair in a field of 154 entries.

Among the other suggested project deas is to study what happens if you fool seeds about which way is up, determining whether color can be used to protect plants from insect pests, and figuring out when apples are sweetest. To encourage students to follow their own curiosity, many of the projects are presented as questions. This allows different age groups to customize projects to an appropriate level of complexity.

Science for Kids is primarily geared to ages 8-13. It's also available in Spanish as "Ciencia Para Niños" at www.ars.usda.gov/is/espanol/kids. Science fair project ideas on the Ciencia Para Niños page can be reached by clicking on the yellow button marked "Un Poquito Más."

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