Dr. Fabricio Medina-Bolivar (Arkansas Biosciences Institute and Biological Sciences) and colleagues Dr. Nirmal Joshee (Fort Valley State University, GA) and Dr. Prahlad Parajuli (Karmanos Cancer Institute, MI) received a grant of $ 465,000 from USDA. The ASU component of this 3-year collaborative project entitled "Scutellaria as a Medicinal Crop: Cryopreservation, Hairy Root Culture, Organic Farming and Anticancer Activity" will focus on the generation of hairy root cultures of Scutellaria as bioproduction systems for potential anticancer compounds. Plants of the genus Scutellaria have been used for centuries in traditional medicine to treat many human ailments and currently extracts from this plant are widely used by prostate cancer patients as supplementary treatment.