Award Data

Perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are highly resistant to chemical/thermal degradation and arehydrophobic and oleophobic. Due to these properties they have been used for decades in productssuch as aqueous film-forming foams Teflon waterproof clothing and food packaging. The sameproperties that make them useful also cause them to be difficult to remediate and to bioaccumulatein livestock and humans. ...

New Opportunity for Small Farmers: Automated High Density Mealworm Farming toImprove Food Security in the Face of Pandemics / COVID-19Our mission is to offer a robust alternative to the unsustainable unstable food supply for animalprotein in the face of pandemics such as COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus). This projectwill provide profitable technology solutions to small and mid-sized mealworm farm ...

Our target problem is the unsustainable unstable food supply for animal protein in the face ofpandemics such as COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus). Current sources of animal proteinsuch as mammals and poultry are unsustainable and pose production and biosecurity risks. Wemust learn lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and make appropriate changes including howour food is produced. Pandemics cause sup ...

Routine use of antibiotics at subtherapeutic levels in the livestock industry has been criticized for triggering antimicrobial resistance. FDA has recommended the withdrawal of medically important antibiotics for production practices in the U.S. as of January 2017. Although various alternatives to antibiotics are currently on the market, none is able to match the efficacy of antibiotics. We recent ...

Adding Value and Sustainability to the Food Industry: Mealworm Protein Ingredient as Extract and PowderThe goal of this SBIR effort is to contribute value and ingredient diversity to the food industry. The insect based food market is currently valued at $105M and is growing to $1.53 billion by 2021. To date only whole insect powders, not fractionated or extracted protein products made from insects ...

The presence of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in the environment represents an emerging issue due to their stability, bioaccumulation potential, and risks to human and ecological well-being. There is a critical need to develop sampling methods for PFAS to assess risks and inform remedial investigations and feasibility studies (RI/FS) at locations where historical releases have elevate ...

Diversifying and Adding Value to the Food Industry: Mealworm Powder as an IngredientThe goal of this SBIR effort is to begin diversifying the insects as a food market currently valued at $105M and growing to $1.53 billion by 2021. Currently, crickets have been the primary focus of the market, but mealworms offer a strong alternative. To become competitive in the larger protein market, the insect b ...

Nutrient pollution caused by excess nitrogen and phosphorus in the water is a costly and challenging environmental problem with widespread negative health and ecological effects. During Phase I XploSafe successfully confirmed the technical feasibility of using its proprietary low-cost biodegradable sorbents to passively adsorb target nutrient ions (ammonium, nitrate, urea, and phosphate) from prim ...

Nutrient pollution caused by excess nitrogen and phosphorus in the water is a costly and challenging environmental problem with widespread potential for negative health and ecological effects. The proposed solution to this problem is the capture of ammonium, urea, nitrate and phosphate on low-cost biodegradable sorbent pellets that upon saturation, with the nutrients can be employed directly as sl ...

Horn Farms Inc needs to routinely produce sufficient annual seed stocks to support commercial production of key canna varieties. Thus the greenhouse diagnostic and sanitization program is necessary to meet production goals. Accurate visual disease assessment is carried out at 2 and 4 weeks of growth (instead of 10 and 16 weeks). Genus specific PCR primers were developed which detect all viruses in ...