Award Data

The ability to freeze boar semen provides several advantages including disease reduction, more rapid genetic transfer, genetic banking, and more precise correlation with optimum female fertility. Although freezing is routine technology in many livestock species, it is not so in teh swine industry. Unfortunately, in boars, sperm quality inconsistencies and poor fertility make this technology commer ...

Unmanned 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 can be ...

Tomato growers face multiple challenges: low profit margins, increased crop stress, and strong global competition. Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) is an increasingly important component of a sustainable supply chain for tomatoes and other specialty crops, but incurs high capital costs. New technologies are needed to increase the competitiveness of US tomato growers, whether in CEA or fiel ...

Hyperspectral imagery produces images that include colors both within and beyond the range of colors that can be seen by the human eye. Hyperspectral Imagery allows for the classification, identification, and detection of vegetation phenomena that relate to the agricultural industry, including: plant species identification, insect and disease detection and monitoring, stress detection, soil qualit ...

The greenhouse requires an environment that has optimum nutrients, temperature, water and light so that it is conducive to rapid, healthy plant growth. Undesirable organisms also grow in such an environment, including disease-causing microbial plant pathogens and slimy microbial biofilm organisms that are difficult to remove and can cause worker hazards. Growers need a universally effective antimi ...

The demand for pollination services from honeybees is expected to increase from 1.7 to 2.5 million colonies by 2027. However, beekeepers are continuing to see an average of 40% losses each year. Most of these losses occur during winter, before the almond bloom in February. Varroa mites continue to be the biggest problem for beekeepers. Dozens of products are on the market, yet with variation in be ...

SOF combat swimmers have a need for the continuous monitoring of each others relative position while diving and for the capability of being able to communicate with each other to help establish a common operational picture (COP).The C3SA system was previously developed under SBIR Topic SOCOM08-001 thru the receipt of both Phase I and Phase II SBIR awards.The C3SA established a stand-alone network ...

Proposal title: Rapid Assessment of Air Void System in Fresh Concrete Water expansion during freeze-thaw cycles can cause deterioration in concrete, leading to scaling, cracking, and crumbling over a period of years. Resistance to this damage is achieved with a system of voids formed by adding surfactants to the fresh concrete to stabilize air bubbles naturally entrained during mixing. The volume ...

In today's tight agriculture economy, one of the most important decisions a farmer makes throughout the year is what type of seed to plant. Optimum yield, maturity, and disease resistance for a specific environment will secure farm revenue by creating better production and decreased use of inputs. However, in a highly consolidated industry where the top 3 players control 60% of the seed market ...

MBio Diagnostics is developing a highly sensitive, inexpensive, easy-to-use test system that will allow growers and regulators to more tightly manage shellfish harvests before, during, and after HAB blooms (see Figure 1). The Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference (ISSC) is a primary industry/regulatory cooperative body in the United States, tasked with fostering and improving the sanitation o ...