Prelude: Expert Advice
The danger of FOC comes in its ability to destroy the banana plant once it penetrates the root and enters the xylem. Therefore, our method of integrating our bacteria into the banana rhizosphere must be highly effective. To ensure that our misconceptions will not detract from the efficacy of our implementation, we consulted Taiwan Banana Research Institute (TBRI) and Dr. Drenth for advice.
For further information on expert interviews, visit the Human Practices page.
Through our discussion with Dr. Drenth and TBRI personnel, we realized that root turnover might significantly hamper the coverage of bacteria over the root system. We thus concluded that our bacteria would have to be inoculated into the rhizosphere of banana plants from the nursery stage, then consistently applied during the vegetative growth phase.
Overview
The threat of FOC TR4 on the banana industry looms ever closer, and the Cavendish cultivar is not sufficiently protected against the rampaging Fusarium Wilt pandemic. To bridge the gap between our lab-based theoretical solution and the very real, dying Cavendish banana plants in the field and actually buy time for the banana industry, we needed a practical and pragmatic way to implement our project into the world. Our goal is to combine theory with practice, and we achieved this by determining a regimen to completely inoculate the banana rhizosphere, turning it into product designs with safety and practicality in mind, and creating supporting entrepreneurship.
Hardware
To turn our engineered bacteria into an applicable, usable product that addresses expert advice, we designed the ingredient composition of the liquid inoculant and an application regimen to ensure bacteria coverage of the rhizosphere. To integrate the liquid inoculant and its application regimen into existing plantation equipment, we further designed an injection tank to automate the process of inoculant dilution and application.
For further information on our Hardware, visit the Hardware page.
Real-World Implementation
We identified early inoculation and consistent bacterial application to the banana rhizosphere to be crucial to implementing the theorized effects of our bacteria into the real world. To merge these key aspects into the implementation of our project in the banana industry, the liquid inoculant must be integrated into the banana plantlet preparation process and the field planting process.
Usage Dynamics
In order to properly apply the liquid inoculant on banana plantlets during nursery stages, we would like to collaborate with TBRI, a major banana distributor in Taiwan. We envision that their lab technicians would apply the liquid inoculant to individual plantlets during nursery domestication so that by the time farmers receive the plantlets, they will already have our engineered bacteria in their rhizosphere. They would choose to include our inoculant in their plantlets based on the improved disease resistance and hence yield of the inoculated plantlet.
To keep up with root turnover and maintain bacterial coverage of the rhizosphere, the implementation of our inoculant in plantation fields at regular intervals must be applied. Thus, we devise methods to provide farmers with a consistent supply of inoculant and a convenient, easily incorporable method of utilizing the inoculant. We envision that they will continue to apply our inoculant as a result of the mitigated loss of yield and the reduced operational costs incurred by standard FOC treatment methods.
In order to further quantify the degree of loss mitigated by our prototype, we used Taiwan as a subject of study and developed a series of bioeconomic models in which the spread rate of FOC TR4 and estimated disease reduction of our liquid inoculant is considered. Our calculations suggest that by the 30-year mark, a total amount of 140 million NTD (4.5 million USD) would be saved from the local banana market.
For details on the calculation of projected farmer profit gained by using our inoculant, visit the Economic Model page.
Product Entrepreneurship
We would like to sell our products to banana farmers with the help of plantlet distributors. Collaborating with them to distribute our product will allow for research and expert insight into possible optimizations of product application through field trial and experimentation. Our product will give banana farmers a cheaper alternative to the widely adopted but flawed method of pesticide application, and the burdensome, multi-year process of crop rotation to reduce FOC spore concentration. We outline our plans to turn our project into a startup business operating through B2B with plantlet distributors and B2C with banana farmers.
Marketing Plan
As we plan for our product to have a global reach in order to lift the burden from the banana industry crisis, a thorough marketing plan is required - we decided to follow the AIDA marketing strategy.
To attract potential customers, we will advertise our product online on several social media. After we make ourselves known in the banana industry via proven efficacy against FOC, we will be able to pique banana industry interest, allowing us to begin expanding our reach on a global scale. Global recognition will soon evoke industry desire for our product based on our product’s superiority over pesticide use and burdensome crop rotation. Thus, more and more farmers will take action to buy our product. We hope that by making a cheaper and more effective solution against Fusarium Wilt, we can prevent Foc TR4 from ending the global banana industry as we know it, and open the realm of using engineered rhizobacteria in agriculture and horticulture.
For further information, please visit the Entrepreneurship page.
Solution Safety
With an entrepreneurship plan to convert our project into a marketable liquid inoculant, we then had to consider the safety of our product. Though we have already considered biocontainment and bacterial safety in our engineered designs, the liquid inoculant as a whole must fulfill its own safety criteria reflected in ingredient choice and regulation adherence. To achieve this, we made intentional choices in hardware design and interviewed an expert on biological pesticide regulations.
For further information, visit the Hardware Page and the Regulation section on the Hardware page.
Public Acceptance
To ensure that our product will be accepted by the general public, we designed a survey regarding the trust in genetically modified probiotics. On a scale of 1 to 5, with low favorability at 1 and high favorability at 5, 59.3% of the respondents were indifferent or favorable towards the acceptance of genetically modified probiotics. This indicates a generally positive public sentiment and a promising market. These results further helped us to decide on the solution strategy of warding off FOC with engineered rhizobacteria, as it is simply the plant’s analog of human probiotics.
