Award Data

Acknowledging the problems of drought and low farm prices, over the last three years the United States Congress has appropriated more than $20 billion in emergency farm aid to boost farm incomes, encourage conservation, and buy crop and livestock insurance. At the same time, millions of acres of the country are contaminated with lead, other metals, and organic pollutants that are expensive to remo ...

Arsenic is a contaminant of soil in orchards, farms, and other sites in the United States and other countries, posing significant health risks to humans and animals. Currently, there is no cost-effective method to clean arsenic-contaminated soils. The main objective of this research is to test the feasibility of using a recently discovered arsenic-hyperaccumulating fern (Pleris vittata) to remove ...

The primary objective of this USDA SBIR Phase II research grant is to develop and support successful Indian entrepreneurs while developing new supply sources for raw material and new product development for the company. This research grant will demonstrate how a private marketing and agricultural based company can contribute to increasing private entrepreneurship among tribal farmers using innovat ...

Terrestrial seawater agriculture that utilizes pure seawater or seawater-based aquaculture effluents as irrigation sources to produce crops along barren coastal deserts, would play a potential role in supply of sustainable food to feed the world's ever-increasing population. The feasibility of seawater agriculture depends first on finding salt tolerant plants and second on developing matched agron ...

Termites represent a significant threat to humans, not only as a result of financial losses due to property damage, but also with respect to their capacity to compromise the environment and adversely affect human health. Current methods of controlling termite infestations rely on the use of toxic insecticides, which are extremely detrimental to human health. The goal of the proposed research is to ...

The use of sub-therapeutic concentrations of anti-microbial agents in animal feed has contributed to theproductivity of the U.S. meat and dairy industries by preventing infectious diseases, by decreasing theamount of feed required and by increasing the rate of animal weight gain. However, failure to observerecommended practices of drug withdrawal can result in concentrations of antibiotic residue ...

The ready-to-assemble (RTA) construction system is a new method for assembling wood structuresbuilt from the following engineered wood products: parallel strand lumber (PSL), laminated strandlumber (LSL), and laminated veneer lumber (LVL). The RTA system is designed for rapid assemblyby small crews of unskilled labor using common hand tools. The design of the RTA systemincorporates engineered w ...

Equine infectious anemia virus (EIAV) is a retrovirus that causes a chronic infection in horses. In theabsence of a vaccine, the control of this disease depends on the diagnosis and elimination of infectedhorses. Currently approved diagnostic procedures utilize agar gel diffusion (AGID), or enzyme-linkedimmunosorbant (ELISA) methodologies to detect antibodies against the virus in horse sera as e ...

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This proposal suggests the development of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) instrumentation capable of detecting nanogram levels of sulfamethazine per ml of extracted sample. Although the use of subtherapeutic concentrations of anti-microbial agents in animal feed has contributed to the productivity of the U.S. meat and dairy industries by preventing infectious diseases, by decreasing the ...