Wine grapes are the highest-value fruit crop in the US with an annual value exceeding $6 billion

Brekland Incorporated received a $181,493 Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) under CFDA 10.212, effective September 15, 2025, with a completion date of May 14, 2026. The company will develop an affordable and effective freeze protection system designed to protect wine grape crops from late-spring freeze events that currently cause crop losses exceeding 40% and yield reductions up to 95%. The project will focus on formulating and testing an insulating foam application method, specifically a foamed hydrogel, to be validated across simulated freeze temperature and humidity conditions.

Upon successful completion of this Phase I award, Brekland Incorporated will deliver a working and tested prototype of the freeze protection system, positioning the company for progression to a Phase II project that would conduct field trials with commercial grape growers. This innovation addresses a critical market need within the $275 billion U.S. wine industry, where current frost protection technologies are expensive, operationally challenging, and only partially effective. The SBIR program's emphasis on translating scientific discovery into commercially viable products aligns with the project's objective to create a solution that removes barriers to crop protection adoption among the nation's expanding wine grape production base.

They are foundational to the $275 billion wine industry. Employing over 130,000 individuals across 48 states, grape production is expanding rapidly beyond pacific states, with wineries in new york, texas and pennsylvania increasing by 17%, 26%, and 32%, respectively, over the past 4 years. One of growers' primary concerns is freeze damage, with disaster events causing significant crop losses (i.e., over 40%) and becoming more frequent. Most dangerous in late spring when crops are in full-bloom or budding, freeze events typically last 1-3 nights, when temperatures DIP below 32 & ordm; f for several hours overnight. Freezing temperatures damage buds and flowers, rarely killing the plant, but dramatically reducing yields by up to 95%. Once rare, these events appear to be occurring more often and are becoming more destructive than in the past, presenting a significant risk to the continued growth and success of the wine industry in the united states. While there are products to help protect from frost, they are expensive, operationally challenging and only partially effective. As such, few growers use these existing technologies and there is growing demand for more cost effective and better protection solutions. The goal of this project is to develop an affordable and effective freeze protection system that enables growers to protect their crops from freeze events. The project will focus on, (1) developing a prototype insulating foam formulation and method of application, and (2) demonstrating the safety and the efficacy of the foamed hydrogel across a range of simulated freeze temperature and humidity conditions. Successful completion of this phase i sbir project will lead to a working and tested prototype. This would lead directly into a phase II project that would test and validate these results in field trials with growers to identify any remaining technical and operational challenges prior to commercialization. Successful completion of this project will lead to a new, lower cost and more effective method of protecting crops from freeze damage.