Capstone Project

In our final semester of the MMB program, my team and I were tasked with identifying an unmet in the biotechnology industry and creating a product and business plan to fill the unmet need. We all have an interest in agriculture and want to help growers reduce their costs during tobacco production. One of the most costly aspects of tobacco management is the cost of suckercides. As a tobacco plant grows, it reaches a stage in its life where it produces a flower. This flower's goal is to put the plant in a reproductive state. The flower must be topped because growing the flower takes a lot of energy away from the growth of the leaf which is the valuable part of tobacco. Once the flower is topped, suckers will start to form in an attempt to put the plant back into a reproductive state. The most common ways to manage the suckers is by hand picking or applying chemical suckercides. By reducing the amount of suckers that grow on tobacco, we could help growers save thousands of dollars over a growing season. We devised a business plan around the production of a new GMO tobacco variety that reduces the size and count of suckers.