List

Small ruminant lentiviruses (SRLV) cause persistent infection and chronic diseases in sheep and goats that can reduce animal fitness, reproduction, and milk production/quality. A reduction in milk will lead to economic losses for dairies, which is accompanied by a reduction in nutrition for kids and lambs that decreases meat and fiber production. A reduction in reproductive efficiency can lower th ...

Current Issue/Need: Hyperspectral Imagery allows for the spatial classification, identification, and detection of vegetation phenomena that relate to the agricultural industry, including: plant species identification, insect and disease detection/monitoring, stress detection, soil quality, and vegetative health that is key to effective precision agriculture. Existing hardware used in hyperspectral ...

Because of its overall popularity, pork represents a significant, worldwide meat-protein source to be utilized in feeding the world's burgeoning population. In fact, most of the world prefers pork over any other animal protein. Interestingly, the U.S. is the larger exporter of pork but China is the largest producer and consumer of pork. Globally more than 109 million tons are produced, 11.3 mi ...

Controlled environment agriculture (CEA)is very capital intensive. In addition to the conventional investments in land and variable costs like seeds, fertilizer, and pest control, CEA requires larger capital investments and higher energy, labor, and input costs.Thus, new technologies are needed to increase the competitiveness of CEA by increasing the yield of high quality fruits and vegetables wit ...

Biomass drying is a core unit operation at most biomass suppliers, aggregator depots, pellet mills, biorefineries, and bioproducts firms. The need to reduce energy consumption, minimize capital, and improve feedstock quality is driving a change in how biomass is milled and dried. A shift from energy-intensive hammermills and grinders to lower energy knife and rotary shear mills is reorganizing the ...

Greenhouse growers of ornamental plants and food crops must deal with plant diseases that can damage or destroy their produce. Within these enclosed greenhouses re-occurring plant pathogen diseases can be extremely problematic, infectious microbes and algae accumulate on moist surfaces. Disease within a greenhouse can be a key limitation to profitable plant production. Once introduced, pathogen po ...

Biodegradable lubricants have great environmental benefits, but are generally more expensive than other lubricants. Our objective is to make an estolide lubricant in a way thatmakes the finished product more affordable. Determining the potential benefits of this new pathway will require a comparison of the cost and performance of the product to the other synthetic lubricants in the market. Process ...

Grow Plastics has a technology that has been demonstrated to generate sandwich core structures in thermoplastic products. This efficient structure allows the generation of plastic products which are equivalent in strength to solid products, yet use 1/3 of the material. This substantial material reduction allows the production of parts that are lower environmental impact (due to source reduction) a ...

Biorefining is the sustainable processing of biomass into a spectrum of marketable products such as fuels, power, heat, food, feed and value-added chemicals. By producing multiple products, a bio-refinery takes advantage of the various components in biomass and their intermediates therefore maximizing the value derived from the biomass feedstock. A bio-refinery could, for example, produce one or s ...

Honeybees are critical to our economy, food security, and environmental health. The honeybee pollination industry adds more than $15 billion in value to agricultural crops each year. This industry supports an estimated 90-130 crops, the harvest which accounts for up to one-third of the U.S. diet. These valuable pollinators ensure that our diets are plentiful with fruits, nuts, and vegetables. Not ...