Technology Transfer

License Spurs New Business

A TECHNOLOGY FROM NASA'S STENNIS Space Center has launched a small technology consortium that could gross approximately $20 million over the next five years by commercially developing several environmental uses of a plant stress imager prototype. Associated Technical Management Corporation of Texarkana, Texas, researches and develops applications of the portable video imager and multispectral imaging system. The consortium's Chief Executive Officer Don Sumner has signed an exclusive license agreement with Stennis.

Stennis researchers have filed a patent application through the NASA Technology Transfer Office for the portable video imager, which measures far-red and infrared light waves to detect "plant stress." Such stress indicators are signals of how plants are reacting to poor environmental conditions, such as insufficient nutrients, inadequate watering, disease or insect infestation.

"I can't express the excitement we feel and the possibilities that are before us," Sumner said. He envisions a system that could be placed on all-terrain vehicles for environmental use, on helicopters to cover vast expanses of timber and forests and eventually on aircraft to evaluate larger or more distant locations. He has thought about adding ground-penetrating radar to the device to sense underground leaks in gasoline storage tanks or in sewage lines. Additional lenses and filters could enable the device to detect gases or vapors.

Past attempts to detect plant stress had been too labor intensive for farmers to be cost-effective. Sumner believes a farmer or forester could efficiently and routinely analyze plant stress while working in the field. Savings in harvest time, fertilization costs and crop losses could substantially increase profits. "Being able to expand the imager's flexibility would provide farmers with a two-week lead to respond to whatever the crops needed to increase yields," Sumner said.

For more information, contact the Commercial Technology Office at Stennis Space Center. Call: 228/688-1929. Please mention you read about it in Innovation.