Meet Tanishka Aglave, 17, who built citrus disease tool and won $50,000

For Tanishka Aglave, citrus greening isn’t simply a problem that exists in textbooks or agricultural research papers. She watched it take a toll on Florida citrus growers, including her own family, growing up. The disease has destroyed groves across the state, making what used to be a hallmark of Florida agriculture a hard fight for farmers. Aglave was 17 when she set out to attack that fight on multiple fronts at once. The IB senior at Strawberry Crest High School has come up with a three-pronged approach, which includes a treatment using curry leaves, a localized system for steam therapy, and an artificial intelligence tool to help growers track the disease, states an online report by the Davidson Institute website.