Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

The S-1026 Technical Committee Multistate Research Project Meeting, held in Suite 250 at the Channel Inn in Washington, DC was called to order by chair person, Dr. Warnock, at 9:00 a.m. on Friday, April 22, 2011. After greeting members were addressed by Dr. Robert Shulstad. Here are notes from his comments: Outlook for 2012 is highly uncertain and in budget process areas of emphasis what is important what is not. Funding for non agricultural resources is coming under pressure from traditional agriculture. As we go into this proposal make sure is current and talk about farmers, economically creating jobs in that area. New appendix H evaluation form used by evaluation committee; so use as Bible and look closely for criteria and address each and everyone. Traditionally reviewers comprise of more laboratory folks that follow scientific methods. Devote plenty of time to work on this  initial statements/issues/justifications. Also pay attention to relating current work and previous work. Measurements of progress and results should be well addressed. These proposals are now being evaluated along with AFRI so make sure of integration of research and extension and total team efforts rather than aggregation. During each research and extension associations meetings common theme is have involvement of industry on front end  interaction of industry partners in defining new research goals. Carnegie Mellon University, a totally private university, is the largest recipient of USDA competitive funding. Research is done mostly by engineering and then partner with universities with extension such as WSU, Oregon State and Penn State. New research proposal document needs to be communicated with various people (industry/users) to justify work. Documentation states that people in nonacademic world feels there is problem and this work will address this problem. Reason why everyone is putting greater effort in the evaluation of projects is to form partnerships that will provide collaborations that will lead to obtaining competitive federal grants. Decrease number of objectives and have everyone working on same page. Better spring board for moving forward. Following are fuel for life: integrated projects; cooperation across lines that is real; history of sharing equipment; history of being involved at different stages along the processing information; now need outreach component; identifying clientele and figure out how to help them. Dr. Shulstad has asked for extension of S1026 project. Formal extension process is prepared to send in for extension and therefore allowing termination on September 30, 2012. New proposal should be ready for review by June 2012. Development committee will take 4 to 6 weeks. Therefore, write draft of project outline and finish proposal by this summer for next year starting. Request development committee this summary including justification why this has to be done at multiple institutions, who will benefit and why to put funds in this project rather than other projects. Must be responding to REAL NEED! Must show clientele needs! Each of objectives must fit under multistate participation/clientele identified/how do citizens benefit. The following annual progress reports were shared: Dr. Mary Warnock (University of Arkansas-Fayetteville): Dr. Warnock had already completed all work and presented last year during annual progress report meeting at Atlanta, GA. Dr. Karen Leonas (Washington State University-Pullman): Dr. Leonas reported work related to development of yarn composed of electrospun fibers and evaluation of biodegradable mulches. Please see Appendix A for details. Dr. Suraj Sharma (University of Georgia-Athens): Dr Sharma reported research work related to the development of microcapsules loaded with essential oils to produce smart textiles. His research primarily looked at effect of essential oils such as rosemary and peppermint as an acaricides. Please see Appendix B for details. Dr. Majid Sarmadi (University of Wisconsin-Madison): Dr. Sarmadi's lab was undergoing renovation therefore he did not receive funding for this academic year. Dr. Yiqi Yang (University of Nebraska-Lincoln): Dr. Yang reported research related to the development of biocomposites from plant proteins matrices reinforced with jute and switchgrass. Research related to the development of nonwoven scaffolds from Zein for tissue engineering applications was also presented. Please see Appendix C for details. Other items of business included: Dr. Sharma was elected for the chair position by acclamation of the committee members. Members proposed to request Dr. Sarkar to hold the Secretary position. New Research Proposal Members from Georgia, Nebraska, Washington, Tennessee and Wisconsin contributed in the initial draft edited by Dr. Yang. A deadline was set for drop dead submission of information to Dr. Yang. If this deadline is missed, this person cannot be associated with this new project proposal. Deadline is 5:00 PM ET on May 16, 2011. May 26th 2011. Dr. Yang will send draft to Dr. Sarmadi June 15th 2011. Dr Sarmadi will send draft to committee for review July 11th 2011. Committee responds back to Drs Yang and Sarmadi August 1st 2011. Proposal is done and sent to Dr. Shulstad. Meeting adjourned at 4:00 p.m., April, 22, 2011. Respectfully Submitted, Suraj Sharma, Secretary, 2010-2011

Under following three objectives of S1026 research group this accomplishment report for 10/10 to 10/11 focuses on intended activities and outputs. Objective 1: To create barrier fabrics with novel finishes and processes for protection against biological threats. Objective 2: To create newer fiber products and designs for textile and apparel products to address fire safety issues. Objective 3: To develop new bio-based textile products/processes to replace petrol-based materials. Outputs: Dr. Yang's group, for the first time in the world, have demonstrated that agricultural wastes such as switchgrass stems could be used as reinforcement materials for thermoplastic composites, especially for the light-weight composites. His group also has developed first time 100% biocomposites using cellulosic fibers as reinforcement materials and plant proteins as matrix without using any chemicals as plasticizer. They have also proven that plant protein nonwoven scaffolds are excellent materials for cell culture and for controlled drug release. They have demonstrated that silk nonwoven webs made by insects have properties very similar to commonly used silk fibers and has potential to be commercially used as new silk fibers. Results shared by Dr. Leonas's group showed that, within spinnable range, smaller voltage which results in larger fiber diameter leads to larger yarn tensile tenacity. Continuous fibers were collected from spinning solutions of 14% PCL plus chitosan from 2.5% to 12% concentration. By studying the fiber diameters, it was found that the fiber collector rotating speed had the largest influence among all the variables studied, including voltage, distance, and feed rate. Other research by Dr. Leonas's group was on degradation behavior of mulches. All products evaluated in this study, both BDM and non-BDM mulches, showed a loss of physical properties (strength and elongation) after exposure in high tunnel and open field environments. There were changes in MW indicating degradation of the products. SEM micrographs showed cracks and pitting of the starch based BDMs. There were no other patterns with regard to location or environment that could be determined based on mulch type. In comparing the influence of open field and high tunnel environments on strength loss, almost two-thirds of the samples had increased strength loss when in the open field. This result was expected as sunlight intensity and other weathering factors are thought to increase degradation. Cellulose had the greatest loss of strength in the open field indicating that it was more readily degraded by sunlight and other weather factors when compared with the starch-based mulch products, SB PLA and PE film. The SB PLA did not show increased degradation compared with other BDMs studied here. In research by Dr. Sharma's group, simple coacervation technique was used to develop essential oils loaded microcapsules and then observing their acarcidial effectiveness. Clove and Thyme oils were found to be effective acaricides. His results showed that stirring speed and type of oil (viscosity effect) were the critical variables to control the size of microcapsules. In addition, it was demonstrated that vacuum drying could be an effective process to prevent aggregation of microcapsules and attach physically to the fabric without any binder. In another study, through bioassay against HDM (Der.f), they observed that clove containing phenolic compound (85% eugenol) was more effective in reducing the number of house dust mites than thyme oil.

Reddy, N. and Yang, Y., Biocomposites Developed Using Water Plasticized Wheat Gluten as Matrix and Jute Fibers as Reinforcement . Polymer International. 60(4)711-716(2011). Jiang, Q., and Yang, Y. Water Stable Electrospun Zein Fibers for Potential Drug Delivery. Journal of Biomaterials Science: Polymer Edition. 22, 1393-1408(2011). Reddy, N. and Yang, Y., Completely Biodegradable Soyprotein-Jute Biocomposites Developed Using Water without any Chemicals as Plasticizer. Industrial Crops and Products. 33(1) 35-41 (2011). Reddy, N. and Yang, Y., Structure and Properties of Ultrafine Silk Fibers Produced by Theriodopteryx ephemeraeformis. Journal of Materials Science. 45(24) 6617-6622(2010). Reddy, N. and Yang, Y., Structure and Properties of Silk Fibers Produced by Antheraea polyphemus. Journal of Biobased Materials and Bioenergy. 4(4) 367-371(2010). Zou, Y., Xu, H., and Yang, Y., Lightweight Polypropylene Composites Reinforced by Long Switchgrass Stems, Journal of Polymers and the Environment. 18(4) 464-473(2010). Jiang, Q., Reddy, N., Yang, Y. Cytocompatible Crosslinking of Electrospun Zein Fibers for the Development of Water Stable Tissue Engineering Scaffolds. Acta Biomaterialia. 6(10) 4042-4051(2010). Kim, Joo-Ran and Sharma, Suraj (2010). Microencapsulation Technology Using Essential Oils to Produce Acaricides Against House Dust Mites, Herman and Myrtle Goldstein Student paper competition, AATCCs International Conference, Atlanta, GA Joo Ran Kim, M.S. in Textiles, Merchandising and Interiors with an emphasis in Textile Science  August 2010; Thesis Title: Microencapsulation Technology Using Essential Oils to Produce Acaricides against House Dust Mites Kim, Joo Ran; *Sharma, Suraj. Microencapsulation Technology Using Essential Oils to Produce Durable Textile Functionalities. Abstracts of Papers, 2011 Beltwide Cotton Conferences, Atlanta, GA, United States, January 4-7, 2011. Kim, Joo Ran, and Sharma, Suraj, Acaricidal Activities Of Clove Bud Oil And Red Thyme Oil Using Microencapsulation Against House Dust Mites, Journal of Microencapsulation, 29(1):82-91, 2011. Liu, H. and Leonas, K.K. Weight loss and morphology changes of electrospun poly(µ caprolactone) yarns during in vitro degradation. Fibers and Polymers, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp 10-19, 2010. Liu, H., Leonas K. K., and Zhao,Y. Antimicrobial properties and release profile of ampicillin from electrospun polycaprolactone nanofiber yarns. Journal of Engineered Fiber and Fabrics; Vol. 11, No. 7, pp 1024-1031, 2010. Miles, C., Inglis, D., Leonas, K, Moore-Kucera, J., Wxzelaki, A, Wallace, R., Hayes, D., Wadsworth, L., Evaluating potential biodegradable mulches for high tunnel and field vegetable production. 2010 Agricultural Plastics Congress Proceedings, July 31  August 1, 2010, Palm Desert, CA.