Award Data

Feral swine (Sus scrofa) populations in the United States inflict serious and growing ecological and economic impacts to the farming and ranching ecosystems where their population continues to grow and invade new territory. These invasions ultimately impact the security, quality, and safety of the food supply and water resources coming from these regions. Recent and ongoing research is investigati ...

Fertility in artificially inseminated dairy cattle has declined as milk production has increased, and is one of the most costly challenges faced by today's dairy farmer. This fertility decline causes economic losses of >$300 million annually, losses due in part to damage incurred by sperm during the handling, cooling, freezing and thawing necessary for artificial insemination. For it is the qu ...

Food safety is a global problem, which costs the world billions of dollars and over a million lives annually. This project seeks to develop a complete system for easy pathogenic bacteria detection for the food supply chain. The proposed kit will deliver exceptional ease-of-use as well as performance metrics (time, cost, labor). By delivering a complete pathogen detection solution, the kit will ena ...

At sites ranging from Texas to Iowa, utility scale wind has become the lowest cost electricity source available, with recent prices well below 3cents/kWhr, lower than the cost of both coal and shale gas. This not only provides these communities with clean, low cost energy, it also provides a valuable "second crop" to the land owners in these areas. However, this opportunity is currently limited to ...

Demand for mapping forest disturbance and structural characteristics exists from USDA and Federal programs, industry, and international programs such as REDD. Applications range from operational forestry, assessing carbon sequestration, monitoring wildlife habitat, weather and disaster response, infestations, gauging forest productivity, and evaluating programs such as Environmental Quality Incent ...

Greek (strained) yogurt represents nearly half of the $5B U.S. yogurt industry and has grown at a rate of more than 60 percent per year for the past eight years. For every pound of milk used in the manufacture of Greek yogurt, only one-quarter to one-third ends up in the final product. The remaining waste is liquid acid whey, which contains more than 93 percent water, along with minerals, protein, ...

This SBIR project will develop a new process to produce diesel fuel oxygenates from bio-succinic acid and bio-butanol, which are produced in existing biorefineries.Biorefineries produce large quantities of C5 sugars, which are now commercially fermented to bio-succinic acid (C4O4H10) and bio-butanol (C4OH10). What is needed is an efficient means to convert these biomolecules into useful products s ...

The purpose of the VisuGen Global E. coli test under development is to provide a rapid on-site water monitoring method to test environmental water or to assist produce growers establish a Microbial Water Quality Profile in compliance with the FSMA produce rule requirements. Our method will provide rapid on site testing andresults to avoid costly recalls and reduce illness due to microbial contamin ...

Floriculture and nursery crops are one of the highest value-per-acre industries in the farm sector. Like food crops, ornamental crops are infected by many fungal and bacterial pathogens, which result in substantial yield and quality losses. The environmental horticulture industry is one of the key subsectors of the U.S. agricultural economy, providing an estimated 48,883 permanent and temporary jo ...

SummaryUnmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and small UAS (SUAS) technology hold great promise for facilitating the management of wildfires on forest lands. However technology is only a small part of the problem of integrating UAS into fireground operations. Significant concerns must be addressed about the coordination of air assets in the high-risk operational wildland fire airspace environment, which ...