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University of Arizona students have the opportunity to work with the agriculture industry to identify its needs and develop a product to address those challenges with the Go To Market Initiative.

The Go To Market Initiative is a partnership between the University of Arizona (UA) College of Engineering, McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship and the Yuma Center of Excellence for Desert Agriculture.

It provides students with experiential learning and venture opportunities while they work to meet the needs of the agriculture industry, especially date pollination challenges.

鈥淭he pollination of dates is labor intensive, the whole process of growing dates is,鈥� said Paul Brierley, Yuma Center for Excellence in Desert Agriculture executive director.

The Yuma Center for Excellence in Desert Agriculture is a public-private partnership between the UA and the agriculture production industry to address the challenges identified by the agriculture industry. 聽

鈥淥ur role really is to understand what industry wants and work with university resources to get researchers and other people working on these problems and try to get results for the industry that鈥檚 funding our center,鈥� Bierley said.

The students participating in the Go To Market Initiative are tasked with developing methods to ease the date pollination process that they could commercialize.

鈥淲hen you think about innovation and entrepreneurship, it鈥檚 not just about startups. It鈥檚 about corporate innovation, nonprofit innovation, public sector innovation,鈥� Rick Yngve, McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship director said.

He asked, 鈥淗ow do we solve the wicked problems of the world? What are the grand challenges where we have to bring together multiple disciplines to be able to solve that?鈥�

The Go To Market is a two-semester program. The students begin the program by taking a bus tour to Yuma to see the date orchards and pollination.

鈥淭he second semester, as quick as they could, they got the prototype put together and went down to Yuma to test it in actual date orchards,鈥� Bierley.

He said, 鈥淢ost of them probably had never thought about agriculture as an industry or as a potential career. And, all the sudden they鈥檙e immersed in realizing that their major in engineering or their major in business has very real-world applications in agriculture.鈥�

While some students gain experience and complete a course, others can take it a step further. They can work with Tech Launch Arizona to figure out how to take their product to market.

鈥淭ech Launch [Arizona] is the commercialization arm of the university. So, anything that鈥檚 owned by the university and is going to go out and have some kind of commercial impact essentially travels through our office,鈥� Doug Hockstad, Tech Launch Arizona assistant vice president said.

The Go To Market participants can carry their product forward and make a business out of it to serve the industry鈥檚 demands.

鈥淭here is intellectual property that is already part of this particular project and it鈥檚 expected that more will be created during the project. So, it鈥檚 really our job to kind of lay the groundwork to make sure that the startup can be successful and that our goal- I think everybody鈥檚 goal- is to see the results of this project actually hit the market,鈥� Hockstad said.