Award Data

Specialty Crop production margins are eroded by input costs impacts of weather pests anddiseases and market price fluctuations. Producers routinely overproduce to hedge against lossesfrom environmental impacts and ensure sufficient supply to meet retail account demand furtherreducing their average margins. If they had greater certainty in advance of how much they willproduce and when it will be ha ...

Making production of tilapia (and other warm-water fish) financially viable and sustainable on asmall-farm scale depends on several factors. The number-one constraint is the need to maintaino o tropical water temperatures (70 to 100 F) for the fish. To address this need our research focuseson heating the water in individual fish tanks via a closed-loop heat-transfer system usingrenewable energy. O ...

Approximately 900 million oysters are consumed annually in the U.S. withaquaculture making up 95%+ of all U.S. production. Yet growth of oyster farming offshorewhile expanding somewhat over the past decade is not keeping up with consumer demand. Oneexpert estimates it will take at least another decade for Maine's harvests merely to double. Sincemost Atlantic oysters (Crassostrea virginica) start l ...

Embryo transfer is one of the tools a livestock producer can utilize to rapidly increase the genetic gainwithin the herd overcome low pregnancy rates during physiological stress or leverage high qualityfemales by producing multiple offspring per female (rather than 1/year).The ability to transfer fresh orfrozen embryos is important in dairy and beef cattle reproduction as well as in sheep goats de ...

MBio Diagnostics is proposing to develop a portable rapid inexpensive technology formore effective detection of harmful algal bloom (HAB) toxins in shellfish.The proposedproduct will help producers and managers get more product to market while ensuringthe safety of this commercially important food supply during HAB events.Shellfish arefilter feeders and can accumulate HAB toxins during blooms.Thes ...

Studies have found Cryptosporidium parvum (C. parvum) oocysts in 65-97% of surface water tested inthe United States. The current Surface Water Treatment Rule does not include analysis for C. parvum.However, the increased incidence of outbreaks involving Cryptosporidiosis have instigated aninvestigation into whether or not testing should be included in the Enhanced Surface Water TreatmentRule. Th ...

Alaskan Commercial agriculture presents many challenges including extreme weatherconditions, isolation from cost-effective distribution, and availability of plants suitable forcommercial application. Clearing requirements for agricultural tracts resulted in a loss of topsoil.Using commercial chemical fertilizers further depletes soils resulting in greater increasing soiladditive requirements. Th ...