{
    "byline": "By Science Blog Editorial Team\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u00b7\n\t\t\t\t\tEdited by\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBrendan Brown",
    "charset": "UTF-8",
    "dir": null,
    "excerpt": "The discovery began as a suspected disease. \u00c9mer Hickey was gardening with her mother in Kinsale, on the Cork coast of Ireland, when they pulled up a pea plant and found its roots studded with pale, wart-like lumps. It looked sick. \u00c9mer, then in her early teens, did the thing that separates a science story from a compost story: she took the plant to school and asked her teacher what was wrong with it.",
    "lang": null,
    "length": 4988,
    "publishedTime": null,
    "siteName": null,
    "title": "Three schoolgirls in Kinsale pulled up a pea plant covered in warts and, instead of binning it, spent three years testing 13,000 seeds in a spare bedroom \u2014 the bacteria living in those warts made barley germinate 50% faster, and the adults who said it wouldn't work on cereals watched them take Google's grand prize"
}