Award Data

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 ...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has identified the need for a practical analytical instrument for the detection of air emissions resulting from animal manure management systems. Based on this very important need, Giner, Inc. proposes to study and evaluate the feasibility of designing and fabricating a simple-to-operate, selective and solid-polymer electrolyte-based, thick-film electro?ch ...

Cogongrass is recognized as one of the most significant invasive species in the U.S. Cogongrass is a growing threat as it continues its rapid spread across the Southeast, reducing forest and pasture productivity, destroying wildlife habitat, impacting rights of ways and presenting an extreme fire hazard. Throughout the World it has gained notoriety as the "Worst Invasive Plant of Non-crop Lands". ...

The growth of agricultural productivity in the past century can be partly attributed to an intense focus on pest management, including the development of fungicides and bactericides. Agricultural history contains many examples of fungi or bacteria causing complete crop loss. The use of fungicides and bactericides can prevent such catastrophic losses and maximize yield, however, these benefits come ...

Situation or Problem: Use of high quality transplants (seedlings or rooted cuttings) is critical for success in horticultural crop production. The transplant quality can be evaluated using various aspects including visual quality, vigor and status of pests/diseases. As high quality transplant production is a specialized technology, more growers purchase their transplants from specialized propagato ...

Semi-automated analysis of citrus grove data from remotely-sensed devices can reduce groundsurveying for appraisal, crop recording, yield analysis, and grove management. Although theygenerally start with the same aerial infrared imagery for their data collection, grove managers andindependent appraisers each have their own independent requirements for data analysis. By making theanalysis of this ...

The proposed project seeks to identify superior strains and families of white bass for aquacultureby evaluating the progeny of three wild strains collected from a broad geographic range. Thecollections will be designed to evaluate the performance of genetically distinct strains. In orderto control for the effect of family differences, five families will be collected from each of thestrains and t ...

A water-borne net coating is described that will prevent biofouling of netting materials used inaquacultural applications. The novel composition functions through the use of trace quantities ofnaturally occurring antifouling compounds. In addition, it contains no volatile organiccompounds (VOC). The proposed technology is especially attractive since it involves onlyenvironmentally benign compon ...

Water quality and soil erosion are high priority issues for U.S. agriculture. In more humid areas of theU.S., vegetation filter strips have proven to be an effective method of reducing erosion and improvingwater quality. Filter strips are less effective in the West due to sparser vegetation and more variablerainfall. In addition, establishment of vegetation is more difficult in many western wat ...

Cytokines play a key role in the immunobiology of swine, and have the potential to improve themanagement of these animals. The pattern and tissue distribution of inflammatory cytokine expressionmay be indicative of the health or infectious status of the animal. Thus, the development of rapidcytokine tests is necessary to exploit this useful diagnostic information.Cytokines may also play another ...