Agricultural Security
International security concerns and emerging disease outbreaks have heightened public awareness of dangerous organisms. Agricultural professionals need improved tools to more adequately protect our food sources from accidental or intentional contamination. From the fields to the grocer's shelf, Utah State University researchers are creating new safeguards and intervention strategies for predicting, detecting and minimizing the effects of contaminants on public health.
Why this research is important
It is easy to take the food on our table for granted, but in reality there are numerous complicated steps to get it there—all of which present opportunities for contamination. Some components of this complex system include unattended fields and water sources, air and weather patterns, and transportation. These components make our agricultural processes inherently difficult to trace and create challenges unique both in size and variety. In addition, sheer production volume presents issues of scale that are difficult to manage securely.
There has been an emerging need to distinguish between casual and intentional contamination of our food supply in recent years. The problems facing agricultural professionals today call for the multidisciplinary collaboration of life scientists, engineers, physical scientists and security professionals. In addition, researchers at USU are working to integrate efforts with the medical community to increase emergency communications. Such multi-tiered collaboration, combined with law enforcement, will result in early detection of agricultural sabotage and mitigation of its effects.
What is agricultural security?
Agricultural security is the safeguarding of our food at every step in the supply chain. At USU, we're focused on filling fundamental gaps among agriculture, health care and security. Our results will provide tools for immediate and practical decisions during agricultural crises.
Scientific Perspective
Utah State University has significant capabilities in agricultural production, harvest, and processing. Additionally, we have multiple efforts in areas related to food and environmental security, highlighted by the numerous research centers dedicated to developing an arsenal of agricultural security tools for monitoring and mitigating agricultural tampering. These tools will serve as a springboard for communication among agriculture, health sciences and law enforcement professionals.
Topical Overview
Water Use
The Utah Water Research Laboratory and the Biological & Irrigation Engineering Department at USU have unique expertise and resources to study water use, dynamics, and quality. Extensive efforts are underway to understand water use and quality. Of particular note is the emphasis on interdisciplinary water resources planning and management that involves instrumentation and operation of irrigation management systems in collaboration with irrigation water user groups.
Aerosol Tracking and Contamination Assessment
USU scientists are focused on the detection and tracking of clouds and aerosols using IR and LiDAR to automatically find and track aerosol cloud movement in the field with stand-off capabilities. The ultimate goal of this work is to provide identification of aerosol constituents. This ability has been achieved for volatile hydrocarbons that are used in munitions or chemical agents. Capability in this area is important for tracking an agent following its release in an agricultural field setting, which can be complicated during the harvest process. USU can provide expertise in finding, tracking, and identifying constituents.
Environmental Spread Assessment with Weather Patterns
A collaborative group at USU is successful in using weather information and patterns to predict the spread of viral disease. This novel capability is important in anticipating or containing the route that a released agent may take in metropolitan and rural environments. The combination of aerosol tracking and weather pattern analysis is a unique capability that USU can provide for multiple objectives of containment and public safety.
Security Surveillance with Robotics and Electronic Communications
We have extensive capabilities in robotics that are currently being used for surveillance of the transportation system. Field demonstrations have led to defense-related use of robots in foreign surveillance. USU's expertise is available for agriculture in various ways that are related to transportation and command & control architectures for agricultural storage facility security systems.
Infectious Disease Detection and Diagnostics
USU provides routine and overflow analysis capabilities using techniques from classical food analysis to genetic testing capabilities. Additionally, we are developing new technologies to rapidly monitor contamination. Development of gene expression and genomics-based species identification arrays for organism determination of multiple agents in a sample is underway. This array platform will contain thousands of probes to create a signature profile in contaminated food. Supplementing these efforts is the discovery of new compounds that inhibit microbes. These efforts led to the production and isolation of new compounds that inhibit spore germination, food-borne pathogens, and mycobacteria.
Food Traceability and Economic Assessment
Research on traceability and economic impact of food security measures for domestic and international food supply is underway at USU. This includes economic studies to define consumer willingness to pay for traceability and qualityassurance characteristics in beef and pork. Initial findings indicate that a majority of consumers value these intervention and safety activities.
Antiviral Drug Screening
New drugs that inhibit infection from bacterial and viral sources are of great importance. Antiviral drugs are of high interest due to the latest outbreaks and the limited availability of effective compounds. USU researchers are working together to discover, develop, and characterize drugs for the treatment of viral diseases of human and veterinary importance, with particular emphasis on viruses with bioterrorism potential.