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Description
LabTech in your Life: https://www.federallabs.org/successes/labtech-in-your-life
USDA Annual Reports in Technology Transfer: https://www.ars.usda.gov/office-of-technology-transfer/tt-reports
USDA ARS Media: https://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events/news-events
Mission
ARS researchers in the PA conduct research to develop and transfer solutions to agricultural problems of high national priority and provide information access dissemination to:
- Ensure high-quality safe food and other agricultural products
- Assess the nutritional needs of Americans
- Sustain a competitive agricultural economy
- Enhance the natural resource base and the environment
- Provide economic opportunities for rural citizens, communities, and society as a whole.
PA scientists at our 22 research locations in 10 states are addressing all of these goals through the 85 to 100 agricultural and nutritional research programs typically underway in the PA at any one time. The Area Director's Office supports these many vital research efforts by providing administrative, technical and budgetary assistance to our locations. Our goal is to provide superior service to all our customers and employees to further the ARS research mission and the multi-disciplinary research efforts underway in the PA.
This system provides a novel approach to quality management in plant-based products. Plants do not always do what we want. Sometimes stress is needed to get the human-desired outcome. This system consists of a combination of physiological information, plant temperature and water status, and an irrigation controller. The system allows a user to continuously monitor and manage the progress of the plant toward a desired quality outcome.
Benefits
• Allows for the precise imposition and management of plant thermal and water stress.
• Allows for management of quality-related plant outcomes in a highly reliable manner.
• Useful in greenhouse and field settings
• Automated
Applications
• Quality-related factors such as aromatics and taste parameters can be associated with plant status and modified over a season.
• Provides water at minimum amounts to achieve desired outcome (product)
| Internal Lab Reference ID | 99.09 |
Ticks and tick-borne diseases kill humans and animals. Enhanced pathogen detection is needed to improve the diagnosis of these diseases. The TickPath Layerplex is an innovative quantitative PCR (qPCR) assay to detect several tick-borne pathogens simultaneously. This assay aids in the diagnosis and treatment of human and animal tick-borne diseases.
Benefits
• Detects several groups of tick-borne pathogens in a sample simultaneously
• Distinguishes type of tick-borne pathogen in the sample simultaneously
• Guides decision for rapid and appropriate treatment
• Results obtained faster than with other types of assays
Applications
• Use during or after treatment of some tick-borne diseases as serologic titers can be persistent despite proper treatment of infection
• Replace serologic titer assays which are unable to determine if an active infection is occurring
• Can assay whole tick, tick fluid and serum from dogs, cats cattle, etc.
| Internal Lab Reference ID | 68.16 |
A novel process for enhancing rainfall has been invented using only tap water. The water is electrically charged before it is released into warm continental or maritime convective clouds with an agricultural aircraft. This technique has been shown to double the amount of additional rainfall generated compared to conventional cloud seeding methods.
Benefits
• Doubles the additional rainfall generated by cloud seeding compared to conventional methods
• Uses only tap water instead of silver iodide or calcium chloride
• Operating costs are greatly reduced
Applications
• Effective, cost efficient and environmentally friendly method of enhancing rainfall from warm continental or maritime convective clouds
| Internal Lab Reference ID | 36.18 |
An integrated set of sensors, microprocessor, and devices with software that remotely measures surface temperature and simultaneously acquires an image for the purposes of qualifying the sensed temperature. The system can be used to aide in precision irrigation management of center pivot or lateral move irrigation systems by providing surface temperature data for use in irrigation scheduling algorithms and automatic irrigation. The system can also be used in greenhouse environments and in drip irrigated fields to help monitor plant abiotic (drought, chemical) and biotic stresses (disease, insect infestation).
Benefits
Applications
- Can detect whether sensor sees plant or soil thusimproving data quality immensely
- Greatly improved irrigation scheduling
- Much cheaper acquisition of data critical for realtimecrop management
- Improved accuracy in crop yield forecasting
- Water conservation
| Internal Lab Reference ID | 288.12 |
Detailed are novel double stranded RNA constructs that target either Chloride Intracellular Channel (CLIC) or Sucrase gene expression in Aphids. The use of these constructs have shown increased mortality in aphid species, including but not limited to Diuraphisnoxia, Myzuspersicae, and Schizaphisgraminum. Also detailed are novel methods for pest management.
Benefits
Applications
| Internal Lab Reference ID | 177.12 and 41.17 |
No Funding for this lab
ARS research is organized into National Programs. These programs serve to bring coordination, communication, and empowerment to approximately 690 research projects carried out by ARS. The National Programs focus on the relevance, impact, and quality of ARS research. Check out the National Programs' website here:
