Award Data

Nitrate is an important nutrient for crop production. Soils with excess nitrate amounts and shallow groundwater tables pose a high risk to nitrate leaching into drinking water supplies. A shortage of nitrate decreases agricultural productivity. Measurement of soil nitrate content is a tedious, time consuming, and expensive process. Currently, there are no commercial sensors for in-situ nitrate det ...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has identified the need for a practical analytical instrument for the detection of air emissions resulting from animal manure management systems. Based on this very important need, Giner, Inc. proposes to study and evaluate the feasibility of designing and fabricating a simple-to-operate, selective and solid-polymer electrolyte-based, thick-film electro?ch ...

[Situation or Problem] Huanglongbing (HLB), or "Citrus Greening" disease, increasingly raises costs to growers and threatens to impact 100% of Florida citrus acreage by 2016. Early detection and control of this disease is essential to the survival and productivity of the Florida citrus industry. [Purpose] To conduct Proof-of-Concept testing of DATASTAR's remote sensing and GIS approach designed to ...

Cogongrass is recognized as one of the most significant invasive species in the U.S. Cogongrass is a growing threat as it continues its rapid spread across the Southeast, reducing forest and pasture productivity, destroying wildlife habitat, impacting rights of ways and presenting an extreme fire hazard. Throughout the World it has gained notoriety as the "Worst Invasive Plant of Non-crop Lands". ...

Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus (PRRSV) costs the swine industry approximately $560M annually through reproductive loss in mature females and respiratory disease in growing pigs. There is a need for new vaccines for PRRSV to battle the strain evolution and heterogeneity of this RNA virus. Currently the only available US commercial product is a Modified Live Virus (MLV) from BI- ...

The channel x blue hybrid catfish has been documented as a superior animal for use by the catfish industry. To produce the hybrid a hormnone is used to help ovulate the eggs so they can be stripped from the female. Once the eggs are stripped from the female they are fertilized with sperm from the blue catfish and hatched in a manner sililar to channel catfish eggs. Carp pituitary has been used suc ...

The growth of agricultural productivity in the past century can be partly attributed to an intense focus on pest management, including the development of fungicides and bactericides. Agricultural history contains many examples of fungi or bacteria causing complete crop loss. The use of fungicides and bactericides can prevent such catastrophic losses and maximize yield, however, these benefits come ...

Situation or Problem: In 2007 an estimated 9.1 billion broiler chickens were produced in the United States. Improvements in vaccination uniformity and reductions in labor necessary for vaccination would greatly benefit the broiler industry. Current methods of field vaccination of broiler chickens in the field include administration via drinking water and spray application. The effectiveness of bot ...

The widespread use of synthetic plastics has increased concerns over their adverse environmental impacts, and dramatic fluctuations in the cost and availability of petrochemical sources for plastic production creates the need for renewable, environmentally-friendly plastics derived from agricultural sources. Blow molded products are used widely in packaging, and are a major component of the plasti ...

Situation or Problem: Use of high quality transplants (seedlings or rooted cuttings) is critical for success in horticultural crop production. The transplant quality can be evaluated using various aspects including visual quality, vigor and status of pests/diseases. As high quality transplant production is a specialized technology, more growers purchase their transplants from specialized propagato ...