Award Data

American Solar, Inc. proposes to research and analyze two low cost solar air heating systems for poultry houses. The solar heating systems will use an existing poultry house metal roof and a new wall-mounted, solar curtain system to harvest renewable, solar heated air. The solar heated air will displace cold outside ventilation air that would be brought into the house and require heating by non-re ...

Spoilage losses of fresh fruits and vegetables are estimated to account for 20% of all edible food losses in the U.S. alone. This loss is significantly higher in developing countries due to less sophisticated harvesting and processing equipment and practices. For instance, it is believed that 40% of all food production is lost due to spoilage in India. Microbial contamination of the harvested prod ...

Sorghum is a drought- and heat-tolerant crop that can help meet global needs for food, feed, and fuel. However, sorghum lags behind other crops in making progress in breeding for increased yield and improved traits. Heartland Plant Innovations is developing a robust system for producing and utilizing Sorghum Doubled Haploids (SDHs), a non-transgenic approach that greatly accelerates plant breeding ...

Rainbow Organic Farms Co., DBA Good Natured Family Farms, proposes to establish The Good Natured Food Campus - a local food aggregator, wholesale distributor and value-added facility of locally-grown food from small/mid-sized farms, to be located in the heart of the Northside Regeneration Plan Community in North St. Louis, MO.The Food Campus will address the fresh-food needs of a vulnerable popula ...

Luna Innovations has developed next generation textiles for the control of agricultural insects that maximize plant growth, provide insect control, and minimize or eliminate the need for insecticides. These spacer fabrics have a unique geometry that provides additional separation between the insect and the plant, rendering the plant effectively invisible. It is expected that these textiles would s ...

In order for America to remain competitive in the world market in agriculture production and processing it must continue to innovate and create technologies that decrease the cost of food production. If America can do so, it maintains the ability to produce high quality products. Sorting and grading is an expensive and time consuming part of agriculture production and decreasing its cost through t ...

The sodium battery using beta-alumina solid electrolyte is one of the most promising grid-scale electrical energy storage technologies that can balance the short-duration variability in renewable generation. Despite many advantages, the sodium batteries have several barriers for successful commercialization, mainly related to safety issues and high capital investment for installation. The safety i ...

NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY: This is a phase I SBIR proposal by Adenosine Therapeutics for 6 months of support to synthesize and evaluate novel compounds as agonists of equine A2A adenosine receptors. Some of these compounds have been found to be very effective in reducing rodent mortality form endotoxin or from E. coli-induced sepsis. Circulating endotoxin (lipopolysaccharide) is correlated with the pr ...

NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY: Fish ecology and environmental research scientists have an urgent need for an automated fish recognition system for monitoring fish migration patterns. Many fish species are known to travel for great distances during their life cycle. As they travel past dams equipped with a fish passage, their species, size, total number, and the time are recorded for migration pattern stud ...

NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY: Agricultural spray equipment operators typically cannot monitor all nozzles along the boom. Clogged or malfunctioning nozzles produce undesirable spraying results. This project is designed to lead directly to a useful product, namely, a single-nozzle monitoring unit for agricultural spray applications. The monitoring capabilities of the system will allow more efficient, reli ...