Award Data

A. Situation or Problem The U.S. population has a deficit of dietary Ca, with 55% of men and 78% of women in the United States not meeting the US recommended daily allowance (RDA) for Ca of 1000 mg/d, putting them at risk for developing osteoporosis. One in two women and one in eight men over the age of 50 will have an osteoporosis-related fracture, resulting in more than $10 billion in health car ...

Cellulosic biofuels promise a sustainable, renewable path to replacing the ~200 billion gallons of fuel consumed in the United States in 2008, but the key hurdle is how to economically convert cellulosic biomass into liquid fuels. Cellulose, the most abundant natural polymer on earth, is made of sugar molecules connected by difficult-to-break bonds. To make fuels from cellulosic biomass, it must b ...

Liquid concentration minimizes packaging, transportation, handling and storage costs where the most commonly-used process is a thermal concentration process, such as evaporation and freeze concentration. The use of a thermal process results in substantial product losses through the degradation of flavors, aromas, and color. Steps may be taken to strip and recover volatile essences and oils but can ...

Economic bioethanol production is critically dependent upon the ability to convert both the hexose (C6) and pentose (C5) sugars resulting from cellulose and hemicellulose components of biomass. C5 sugars are not readily fermentable by native organisms. Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are designed to ferment xylose, but their stability, ethanol yield, environmental impact, and survival under ...

This Phase I SBIR research addresses two important and related needs regarding management of the national herd during an animal disease outbreak. First, is the need to facilitate keeping the national animal tracking databases (ATDs) as complete, accurate, and up-to-date as possible. The second is the need to immediately stop the transport of potentially-infectious animals during an animal disease ...

This application describes the Phase I commercialization by Virginia Cobia Farms (VCF) of a combination of unique technologies including proprietary technology involving molecular salinity nutrient sensors in fish, use of intensive land based recirculation systems (RAS), novel dietary fish feed formulations as well as commercial production scale application of ARS scientists focused on development ...

Most contemporary diagnostic tests are designed to detect and identify a single particular pathogen if it may be present in a given specimen. Furthermore such assays typically rely upon a short biomarker, or short signature gene sequence element to INDIRECTLY determine if the specimen is or is not present in the specimen. Such assays are inevitably vulnerable to false negative or false positive re ...

Situation or Problem The blue orchard bee (BOB), Osmia lignaria, is a solitary, native bee species that has been demonstrated to be an excellent pollinator of almonds, cherries, apples, pears and other crops, but has yet to become available on a large scale. The economics and scientific knowledge are now in place for the BOB to become a commercial pollinator, but only if large populations of the b ...

Strawberries are a very valuable fruit crop in the United States, ranking fourth in production. The state of California leads this charge at 1.4 billion pounds of strawberries, 83% of the nation's total, worth some $800 million (2001). Production costs are estimated $25,000 per acre, of which harvesting is near 63%. Harvest labor costs are more than 40% of total costs Strawberry plants continuousl ...

The world fungicide market is approximately $5.5 billion and is almost exclusively synthetic chemicals.Over the past decade there has been increasing concern over chemical pesticide residues in the foodsupply, in the groundwater, and associated with worker safety issues. Recent legislation may limit theuse of many existing chemicals and the cost of research has slowed the introduction of new fung ...