Product/Service Development

Transforming passive evacuation into active dynamic system using IoT and SW algorithm

Innovative Solar Home System Technology Development For The Communities Without Electricity

Develop and install off-grid pico hydro - solar hybrid power generation system for remote community in developing countries to provide electricity for daily life and small sustainable industry for the community

Leslie Shor and Daniel Gage of the University of Connecticut in the U.S. seek to demonstrate that protozoa can be used to spatially disseminate beneficial bacteria throughout the rhizosphere, which is the zone of soil around the plant roots. Native, encysted protists deployed in seed coatings could improve crop yields in smallholder farms by delivering viable biocontrol bacteria to growing root tips.

Travis Bayer of Asilomar Bio in the U.S. is developing a low-cost compound that mimics the plant hormone strigolactone to help eradicate the parasitic weed Striga, which is jeopardizing food security and income in smallholder farms across sub-Saharan Africa. Striga lies dormant in arable soil, and is activated by strigolactone produced by plants including staple crops such as maize and rice. Striga then attaches to the plant's roots, steals water and nutrients, and produces toxins, and can completely devastate crops.

Zhongguo Xiong of the University of Arizona in the U.S. seeks to modify existing genes in cassava plants that are essential for the translation and replication of Cassava brown streak virus (CBSV). This would lead to virus-immune cassava without depending on conventional genetic engineering.

Jeffrey Coleman of Rhode Island Hospital and the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in the U.S. seeks to identify isolates of the fungus Fusarium that are capable of establishing a beneficial relationship with important crop plants in Sub-Saharan Africa. These endophytes could be used to increase crop production while preventing the invasion of disease-causing pathogens.

Wilmer Cuellar of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia seeks to modify the autophagy pathway in plants, which is the mechanism that organisms use to sequester and degrade damaged proteins, to instead target and destroy proteins of pathogenic viruses. This new strategy for virus elimination in plants will first be tested in cassava, but could be functional in other plant-virus systems as well.

Michael Chan of the Ohio State Research Foundation in the U.S. will develop an engineered strain of bacteria used to ferment beans in traditional Asian and African diets, to display an antigen from the Tuberculosis bacterium. The engineered bacillus will then be used to make the traditional Asian dish natto, which can serve as a kind of oral vaccine to elicit a strong immune response. If successful, this strategy can be used to introduce a variety of disease antigens through culturally accepted foods.

James Rogers of aPEEL Technology in the U.S. is developing a molecular camouflage that uses plant extracts to create an edible, ultrathin barrier that can be applied to harvested crops to extend their shelf-life without refrigeration and protect them from being eaten by pests. In Phase I, they discovered that highly cross-linked cutin-like polyesters made the best coating material for plants.