NIFA on NBC, biofuel breakthroughs, and more in this week’s Fresh from the Field

Jazzin' for blue jeans

Stony Creek Colors has received support from the USDA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program. Located near Nashville, Tennessee, the company is developing land management and crop management principles for growing indigo plants and chemical processing procedures for extracting the natural indigo dye from these plants. Next summer it will have 30 farmers growing 180 acres of indigo. The company opened a 20,000 square foot processing facility where the indigo dye is produced. It is working with Levi Straus, which will buy the natural indigo dye for production of a line of jeans that are produced using the natural dye. Stony Creek Colors is also in touch with Sensient, a company that deals with both natural and synthetic pigments, and will explore the possibility of using the indigo dye for various food applications. Stony Creek Colors team members have received considerable publicity. They were selected to make a presentation at the Ag Innovation Showcase in St. Louis in 2015, and recently they received the Martha Stewart American Made award.

Read the Martha Steward American Made award story. Image courtesy of Sarah Bellos.

A prescription for green beans in in Kentucky

Compared with other parts of the country, residents of Appalachia face higher rates of chronic disease, such as obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure.

One eastern Kentucky health agency is using its patient access to help promote healthier choices by writing prescriptions for fresh produce. The Mountain Comprehensive Health Corporation (MCHC) offers the Farmacy Health Improvement Program to patients who are pregnant, have Type 1 diabetes, and eligible patients with Type 2 diabetes, obesity, and/or hypertension. Through Farmacy, eligible patients received vouchers to purchase fruits and vegetables at local county farmers markets. The program also offered education on eating and growing healthy foods. 

The project's goal is to improve eating habits for low-income people while also improving their health outcomes. The expected impact would be a lower impact on healthcare costs by this group with improved health outcomes.

The 2016 survey results of the Farmacy Health Improvement Program noted a number of results. Nearly 54 percent of participants surveyed reduced the amount of money they typically spend on healthcare. Additionally, nearly 70 percent froze or canned the fruits and vegetables they bought through the FARMACY program. Fifty percent of participants saw improvements in blood pressure.

The research is supported by NIFA’s Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive (FINI) Grant Program.

Read about the Farmacy Health Improvement Program. Image provided by Lance Cheung/ USDA.

American-made flight fuel

Late last year, an Alaska Airlines Flight landed at Washington National Airport from Seattle Tacoma International Airport. The arrival marked the first commercial flight powered by a new renewable fuel made of wood waste, a cellulosic biofuel blended with, and indistinguishable from traditional jet fuel. The biofuel was one of many successful outcomes of the Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance, led by Washington State University. Since its launch in 2011, this five-year, $39 million project has advanced research into biofuels and biochemicals, fostered the Northwest regional biofuel industry and helped educate tomorrow’s workforce on renewable energy. Thirty-two member organizations contributed to research, education and extension efforts that reached 38,724 K-12 students, 845 teachers, 213 undergraduate students, 199 graduate students, and 380 stakeholder groups. The project produced 44 publications, 135 news stories, 250 conference presentations, and posted more than 300 social media posts. Moreover, the Alaska Airlines flight was the biggest news story of the year for the airline, generating 313 articles, 200 broadcast stories, and 22,000 likes, shares, and social media comments within 48 hours of the flight.

NARA was funded through NIFA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative's Coordinated Agricultural Projects program.

Read about the historic flight in Architectural Digest. Image provided by WSU.

NoroCORE cultures a cure

Norovirus, often known as stomach flu, is so good at infecting humans that it’s been called the perfect human pathogen, so virulent that a person can become sick within a few hours of consuming as few as 20 virus particles. In the United States alone, there are about 21 million cases each year that result in more than 800 deaths. The NoroCORE team, led by North Carolina State University, is a multi-disciplinary collaborative of 30 researchers from 25 universities, leaders in the fields of basic, food, and environmental virology. Their goal was to reduce the burden of foodborne illness associated with viruses. NIFA supports the project with a $25 million Agriculture and Food Research Initiative grant. In 2016, NoroCORE team members at the Baylor College of Medicine announced a breakthrough discovery -- they successfully cultured the human norovirus in intestinal cells. This goal had eluded scientists for more than 48 years. 

Read more about NoroCORE. 

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's BAT

Wind energy is a promising renewable energy resource, but most traditional turbines can’t capture winds at higher altitudes, where wind power is often much stronger. Altaeros Energies with support from the Small Business Innovative Research Program has developed a Buoyant Airborne Turbine (BAT) to produce wind energy in remote locations. The BAT is filled with helium and maintained at 1,000 feet, where wind speed is stronger and more uniform than at ground level. The wind turbine produces electricity that can be fed into a micro-grid to provide clean and sustainable energy for remote, isolated communities. There is considerable interest in this technology in Alaska and the company has received a $7 million investment for future deployment of the BAT system in Japan. Altaeros Energies was featured in CNN’s 2014 edition of The CNN 10: Inventions.

Watch the Altaeros Energies BAT video. Image provided by Altaeros Energies.