The Oklahoma-based Noble Research Institute announced Wednesday that the group will work to create a new environmental services trading platform for agriculture to bring together both carbon-sequestration and water trading goals. Noble has brought together a small cadre of conservationists that have been working on carbon trading or water-quality trading concepts over the last several years. The Noble Foundation challenged those conservationists to look at the various attempts at similar projects and develop a new platform that would allow for both carbon and water trading together, said Bruce Knight, a former USDA undersecretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs under the last Bush administration.Later this week Noble will issue a request for proposals to develop a protocol and business platform. Ideally the project will be testing the protocols and strategies later in the summer. Each segment of a protocol needs quantification and verification. "These are not small tasks and things need to be done carefully and methodically to make them function in a way that willing buyers and sellers can come together for a transaction," Knight said.