Project Proposal
Unmet Need:
Already Existing Solutions:
A fruit tree that can survive in harsh conditions year-round. More specifically we will create trees that grow fruits with a tolerance to heat and requires less water to produce the fruit. We will specifically grow modified banana fruits to grow in harsher temperatures and a lack of water. Banana trees are perfect for their job because of their low time to grow. This will be helpful to Africans to have a good source of food once it begins to produce foods and to maintain a good food source most of the year.
Materials and Facility: brandon
Challenges and Limits:
Cost and Market:
Timeline:
-it can take as little as 6 months to modify a seed for a fruit tree, but can take almost twice as long to grow the tree unless it has been genetically engineered to grow faster.
-you can genetically modify a seed to produce plants on little water source, almost all year long, it can be modified to be a bigger produce of a fruit,
-to successfully grow a banana tree, you need to find the right conditions to grow the tree, a healthy tree when treated should bear its first fruit 3 months after the first fruit stalk is produced. the overall process should be about 4 months for the tree to produce its first ripe fruit.
- Lack of food in poor places around the world, mostly African. As well as the obvious sort of hunger resulting from an empty stomach, there is also the hidden hunger of micronutrient deficiencies which make people susceptible to infectious diseases, impair physical and mental development, reduce their labour productivity and increase the risk of premature death. Micronutrients are nutrients required by humans and other organisms throughout life in small quantities to orchestrate a range of physiological functions.
Already Existing Solutions:
- Organizations that provide food
- clean water straws (LifeStraw)
- Uganda’s Mukono District, Edward Mukiibi, 23, and Roger Serunjogi, 22, founded the Developing Innovations in School Cultivation Project, or DISC, with this premise in mind. The project began in 2006 as a way to improve nutrition, generate environmental awareness, and preserve food traditions and culture for local students by establishing school gardens at 15 preschool, day and boarding schools.
A fruit tree that can survive in harsh conditions year-round. More specifically we will create trees that grow fruits with a tolerance to heat and requires less water to produce the fruit. We will specifically grow modified banana fruits to grow in harsher temperatures and a lack of water. Banana trees are perfect for their job because of their low time to grow. This will be helpful to Africans to have a good source of food once it begins to produce foods and to maintain a good food source most of the year.
Materials and Facility: brandon
- Banana trees
- scientists and researchers
- DNA and gene lab materials
- 2000 square foot room for lab
Challenges and Limits:
- inventing a seed with our minimal biology and botany knowledge
- all plants need some form of water
- cost
- ebola in farmers/disease
- legal regulation with U.S. Department of Agriculture(look at USDA website)
- can not introduce new plant to environments in America
- Have to convince USDA that we can export
- pest and disease
- health issues with GM plants/ insect population
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2408621/
- African peoples lack of knowledge on agriculture
- reproduction of tree could cause problems in other trees
Cost and Market:
- Banana saplings $35 each, around $7000 for 200
- saplingshttp://www.nepadbiosafety.net/subjects/biotechnology/process-of-developing-genetically-modified-gm-crops
- USDA loans
- gene gun $17,000
- Lab Building $30,000
- $129 per gene cloning
- $5000 for 10 sets of DNA Cloning materials
- $6410 for 10 6x8 feet greenhouse buildings
- $3854.70 for 10 greenhouse temperate controllers
Timeline:
-it can take as little as 6 months to modify a seed for a fruit tree, but can take almost twice as long to grow the tree unless it has been genetically engineered to grow faster.
-you can genetically modify a seed to produce plants on little water source, almost all year long, it can be modified to be a bigger produce of a fruit,
-to successfully grow a banana tree, you need to find the right conditions to grow the tree, a healthy tree when treated should bear its first fruit 3 months after the first fruit stalk is produced. the overall process should be about 4 months for the tree to produce its first ripe fruit.