Invincibelle® Spirit Hydrangea >>
Serquet ™- a LAAMScience, Inc. Company >>
The commercial development of early-stage technologies is an exciting -- while challenging -- aspect of the technology transfer process. When finalized products, technologies, and methods evolve from NC State's research and development environments and enter the greater community marketplace, everyone benefits. This article discusses some NC State products to hit the market this year. . .products that began as ideas, brainstorms, exercises in trial and error, and finally materialized in the labs, offices and development environments here at NC State.
:::: Invincibelle® Spirit Hydrangea ::::
In FY10, NC State plant breeders continued to introduce new and improved varieties. Dr. Tom Ranney, Professor of the Department of Horticultural Science, developed a new hydrangea variety, Hydrangea arborescens ‘NCHA1’ Invincibelle® Spirit. The Invincibelle® Spirit Hydrangea is the first-ever pink ‘Annabelle’ hydrangea. The flowers of this plant are always pink even in North Carolina’s naturally acidic soils. It is also tough and adaptable and blooms each year regardless of extreme weather.
The Invincibelle Spirit Hydrangea is such a special plant that since it’s introduction in 2010, it has been featured in over 100 articles in publications including: The Wall Street Journal and The Chicago Tribune. It was awarded “Best in Show” at the Independent Garden Center (IGC) Show in Chicago in August 2010. From Wayside Gardens: It is “ The most important breeding breakthrough of the decade!”
The pink ‘Annabelle’ also brings another pink-colored plus. The exclusive licensee of this plant, Spring Meadow Nursery has launched the Invincibelle® Spirit campaign to donate $1 to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation for each Invincibelle® Spirit plant sold. Growing Invincibelle® Spirit is a way to support to find a cure for breast cancer.
:::: INVINSA™ Crop Stress Protection – A new tool to manage heat and drought stress ::::
It is widely accepted that food production must increase significantly in order to feed the world population that is estimated to swell to 9 billion by 2050. Heat and drought can result in severe crop loss, further straining the global food production web. INVINSA™ is a new technology based on an invention from researchers in the Departments of Biochemistry and Horticultural Science at NC State that directly addresses this problem by reducing crop losses suffered due to heat and drought.
Crops respond to stress by producing ethylene, a natural plant hormone. Stress conditions trigger various negative responses, including wilted or rolled leaves, premature leaf senescence, reduced photosynthetic efficiency, loss of chlorophyll, poor pollination, and flower, fruit and seed abortion, among others. The active ingredient in INVINSA™ , 1-Methylcyclopropene (1-MCP), works by binding to ethylene receptors and preventing the ethylene signal from triggering stress responses in field crops. INVINSA™ technology enables crops to maintain active photosynthesis and healthy leaf function, which allows them to optimize growth during periods of stress. In field trials with heat and drought stress, crops treated with INVINSA™ have shown up to 15% higher yields as compared to untreated control.
INVINSA™ is being developed by AgroFresh Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dow Chemical Company. AgroFresh recently received its first registration for the foliar spray version of 1-MCP from Servicio Agrícola y Ganadero (SAG), the Chilean regulatory authority, a significant milestone in recognizing the promise of this safe and breakthrough science. Additional registrations are underway in countries around the world.
:::: Serqet™ - a LAAMScience, Inc. Company ::::
LAAMScience, a start-up company out of the NC State College of Textiles, has recently introduced their new sales arm, Serqet™. The LAAMScience portfolio is dedicated to making everyday items, such as household wipes and face masks, even more effective due to the use of their novel anti-viral and anti-bacterial coatings. Through Serqe™t, LAAMScience is offering respirators, surgical masks, and reusable, self-decontaminating hand wipes.
All LAAMScience products need only to be exposed to the visible light spectrum to initiate the anti-microbial agent. The photodynamic dye used by LAAMScience generates a singlet oxygen when it reacts with the oxygen in air. This singlet oxygen is capable of killing bacteria and incapacitating viruses when exposed to light and air. Serqet™ products are able to continually self-decontaminate until all of the dye has been photobleached from the surface.