SBIR-STTR Award

This SBIR Phase I study proposes an innovative growing system for helping to maintain the purity of vegetative propagating material (VPM) of grasses, other monocots, and some dicots. The system is a serendipitous adaption from earlier NSF Phase I and II grants in which it was shown that grass sods could be grown very quickly and effectively if planted in functionally sterile media, typically waste composts, over an impervious surface such as plastic sheeting. When the planting matures into a sod, it is harvested and the sod separated and screened into turf pieces or plantlets that are 1 to 3 inches long. The pieces are rinsed in a surface sterilant and or fungicide and the planting in a functionally sterile medium over plastic is repeated until a desired quantity of new VPM is obtained. This essentially closed growing system protects original vegetative planting stock from soil, weed growing medium, and airborne contamination and eliminates non-genetic offtypes and diseases.

Anticipated Results/Potential Commercial Applications of Research:
Vegetative propagating material of valuable plant cultivars produced using the novel system proposed in this Phase I study could have a worldwide demand. The process could be a useful, national, agricultural asset and would be the basis for a solid, "niche" market type, international, U.S. commercial enterprise.

This SBIR Phase II project proposes to establish an entirely new type of Vegetative propagating material (VPM) and a system to reproduce it very rapidly while maintaining and enhancing its purity. The system is quicker and more effective than "Sprigging" of "Plugging". The VPM is derived from whole sods grown in sterile media over plastic sheeting to reduce root contamination. The new system is capable of producing from just a square foot of breeder stock sod hundreds of acres of VPM in less than a year. Several novel features of this essentially closed system eliminate or greatly reduce the risk of any weed, insect, fungal, or soil borne contamination. The system may help reduce the occurrence of offtypes; and it also may have the potential to rapidly reproduce and maintain the genetic purity of direct DNA transfers and of sterile and of non-apomictic cross pollinated hybrids. ANTICIPATED RESULTS & POTENTIAL COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS OF RESEARCH Vegetative Propagating Material of valuable plant cultivars produced using the novel system proposed in this Phase II Project could have a worldwide demand. It would be a clean, rapid method of reproducing valuable planting stock derived from various types of genetic transfer and of maintaining its genetic purity. This could be a useful national asset and would be the basis for a solid, "niche" market type, U.S. And international commercial enterprise.