Award Data

The ornamental sector is the most valuable non-food crop sector of US agriculture. However, changing climates and increased interstate commerce have increased the ease with which diseases can spread and threaten this valuable industry. In the past few decades, Rose Rosette Disease (RRD) has spread from its source in the Rockies, through the Mid-West to the South and major populations centers of th ...

This project seeks to introduce web-based technology tools to the livestock industry that would equilibrate business risks between farmer and processor, moving the relationships toward mobile technology for convenience and reliability, and increasing business efficiency for both parties.Our project is designed to make small to mid-sized livestock farms more profitable by assuring the availability ...

Some 30% of U.S. farm operators are women, and an unspecified number of "farm wives" and other female helpers also perform farm chores. Despite anatomical, physiological and anthropometric characteristics that place women at elevated risk for some farm injuries, women have typically had to use agricultural tools and equipment ill-suited to their frames, physical strengths etc.Green Heron Tools, LL ...

Bovine tuberculosis (TB), a zoonotic disease caused by Mycobacterium bovis, continues to plague the cattle industry in the United States (US) and worldwide. Current diagnostic methods are inadequate; therefore, improved tests are urgently needed for disease control/eradication. The goal of the proposed research is to develop a simple, rapid, accurate, and cost-effective blood test for bovine TB in ...

Foot and mouth disease is distributed world-wide in over 100 countries, and has proven to be devastating to livestock of cloven-hoofed animals such as cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, and buffaloes. Similar to other members of the Picornaviridae family, there is considerable natural genetic variation in the FMDV population found in nature. There are seven serotypes of the foot and mouth disease virus, ...

The need for segregation of poultry based on sex is driven by gender-related differences in growth rate, market age, management practices, and nutritional requirements. Each day, global poultry industry staff would ideally like to determine the gender of > 150 million newly hatched birds. Currently, this can be done only manually at the hatchery, which is a virtually impossible undertaking. Automa ...

This project is the last piece of the round timber production puzzle for WholeTrees Structures' SBIR-funded research initiatives: improved selection and grading procedures for round pole timber, building on ASTM visual grading rules for poles and piles, but for structural spanning applications. This research project is based on a solid body of prior work (Wood et al. 1965; Goodman et al. 1981; ...

Salix Lignopolymers is commercializing a formulation of polymer-grafted kraft lignin that utilizes controlled polymerization chemistry to produce a hybrid nanoparticle having a lignin core and a polymer corona. When grafted with water-soluble polymers, experiments in surfactant applications have shown materials made of 60% lignin are highly surface active. In contrast, traditional polymer grafting ...

SummaryAlgae are heterogeneous groups of mostly photosynthetic organisms that are found in virtually every aquatic environment on earth. They exert influence on flux of carbon dioxide, generate large fraction of oxygen present in the earth's atmosphere and produce enormous quantity of organic carbon. Humans have long recognized the value of algae as a source of food and non-food products, and ...

There is a growing body of evidence that neonicotinoid based insecticides are partly responsible for the so-called bee colony collapse disorder in which entire colonies of Western honey bees die off. However, many experts believe that more scientific research is needed before supporting a ban of these pesticides to take them off the market. Seacoast is developing an innovative analytical device to ...