When you buy a traditional prototype, you are only getting a prototype, and there are several steps to complete before you’ll have an approved, saleable product. With P3 from PTI, the same tool that provides the prototype for testing and design verification can be used for the initial production run. In some low volume scenarios, the one tool is often used for the entire production volumes.

According to Khershed Cooper, a program director in NSF's Directorate for Engineering, "This project enables the efficient fabrication of materials using the building blocks of life, such as silk."

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A new method developed by National Science Foundation-funded engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology may offer a starting point for delivering life-saving treatments to plants ravaged by such diseases.

While the human world is reeling from one pandemic, ongoing epidemics are affecting crops and putting global food production at risk. Oranges, olives and bananas are under threat in many areas due to diseases that affect plants' circulatory systems and that cannot be treated by applying pesticides.

PTI Production Prototype (P3), a capability referred to at PTI as P3, is a central element in our company. This proprietary prototype injection molding solution gives our customers a competitive edge in the market. Our innovative alternative to rapid prototyping and rapid injection molding delivers the benefits of a bridge tool.

Their method uses an array of microneedles made of a silk-based biomaterial to deliver nutrients, drugs or other molecules to specific parts of a plant. The findings are described in the journal Advanced Science.

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These diseases are difficult to detect early and to treat, given the lack of precision tools to access plant vasculature to identify pathogens and to sample biomarkers. The team decided to take some of the principles involved in human precision medicine and adapt them to plant-specific biomaterials and drug-delivery devices.

In lab tests, the team used tomato and tobacco plants, but the system could be adapted to almost any crop, they say. The microneedles not only deliver targeted payloads of molecules into the plant but can also be used to take samples for lab analysis.

If you are looking to stretch your program budgets further and reduce the number of manufacturing processes, then our P3 prototype injection molding solution is right for you!

The microneedles, which the researchers call phytoinjectors, can be made in a variety of sizes and shapes and can deliver material specifically to a plant's roots, stems or leaves, or into its xylem (the vascular tissue involved in water transportation from roots to canopy) or phloem (the vascular tissue that circulates metabolites throughout the plant).