California Ag Network

Tag: NIFA

  • $69 Million to Support Food Security Needs, Including $6+Million for CA SNAP Shoppers

    The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced today an investment of $69 million to address critical food and nutrition security needs of low-income communities enduring the pandemic, enhance the resilience of food and healthcare systems impacted by the pandemic, and maximize funds reaching participants. This is one of several key steps that USDA is taking to ensure access to healthy and nutritious food in all communities, so every American has a chance to live a productive life and reach their full potential.

    Twenty awards totaling $61.5 million are for Nutrition Incentive Grants, and 15 awards totaling $7.5 million are for Produce Prescription Grants. These grants are all part of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s (NIFA) Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program COVID Relief and Response (GusCRR) grants program.

    “Bolstering nutrition security is one of our top goals in this Administration. The awards we are announcing today will help households in communities across the country – many hard-hit by the pandemic and the resulting economic challenges – be better equipped to purchase healthy fruits and vegetables. The organizations receiving this funding have demonstrated their ability to support vulnerable Americans with timely and impactful relief during this ongoing crisis,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

    Examples of organizations funded for Nutrition Incentive Grants include:

    • Wholesome Wave Georgia for its “Georgia Fresh for Less” program, providing over $3.6 million in fresh, local produce to Georgia’s food-insecure families. ($646,781)
    • The Food Basket, Inc., Hawai’i Island’s Food Bank, for “DA BUX Double Up Food Bucks” program, pioneering nutrition incentives to increase the purchase of Hawai’i grown produce among SNAP beneficiaries. ($5,000,000)
    • California Department of Food and Agriculture’s “California Nutrition Incentive Program” will empower state SNAP shoppers to purchase more fresh, healthy foods, increase their consumption of fruits and vegetables, and improve their food security and health outcomes while recovering from the pandemic and economic crisis. ($6,325,464)
    • Fair Food Network, Michigan will increase the reach and availability of “Double Up Food Bucks” to low-income communities in areas of the state hardest hit by the pandemic, and bring an additional $3.75M in fruits and vegetables to the tables of Michigan families across the two years of this grant. ($4,997,950)

    Examples of organizations funded for Produce Prescription Grants include:

    • Fresh Approach of Concord, California, for its “Trauma-Informed VeggieRX” program to increase access to and consumption of healthy foods among low-income populations. ($129,019)
    • Mountain Comprehensive Health Corporation (MCHC) of Whitesburg, Kentucky, for its “MCHC FARMACY” program to provide SNAP participants extra incentives to purchase fresh produce. ($619,681)
    • Community Outreach and Patient Empowerment Program, Inc., of Gallup, New Mexico, for its “Navajo Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program” to address rising food security needs among Navajo individuals and enhance food and health care systems in the Navajo Region. ($647,027)

    Find out more about the impact and public value of NIFA’s research investments online https://nifa.usda.gov/impacts.

  • Over $7M to Support Ag Research Innovations and Workforce Development

    The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) announced today an investment of over $7 million in research grants to U.S. Non-Land-grant Colleges of Agriculture (NLGCA).

    These grants aim to increase research, education, and outreach capacity at Non-Land-grant Institutions to support development of the innovations and workforce needed to sustain the agriculture industry in the future.

    “The National Institute of Food and Agriculture awards research, education and extension grants to solve the grand challenges before us,” said NIFA director Dr. Carrie Castille. “These efforts will help improve rural economies, increase food production and agricultural profitability and sustainability, address climate change and related issues, ensure food and nutrition security and train the next generation of the agricultural workforce.”

    Examples of the 24 funded projects to U.S. Non-Land-grant Colleges of Agriculture include:

    Humboldt State University, Arcata, California, will prepare a diverse pool of natural resource scientists to enter a workforce focused on climate-ready and sustainable agricultural practices, particularly in rangelands ($299,999).

    Texas A&M University, Commerce, Texas, collaborating with Tarleton State University, will learn how pollinator-friendly perennials in ornamental landscapes can provide a solution to decades of major declines in pollinators, through their Plant Drought Response and Insect Pollinator Studies project ($299,867).

    American Indian Higher Education Consortium, working in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, will create a network of scientists and educators to facilitate research, education and outreach activities relating to soil and water quality ($29,827).

    Background:

    Non-Land-grant College of Agriculture (NLGCA) and NLGCA Institutions are public colleges or universities offering a baccalaureate or higher degree in food and agricultural sciences. Land-grant Universities (also called Land-grant Colleges or Land-grant Institutions) are U.S. higher education institutions designated by a state to receive the benefits of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890.

    Capacity Building Grants for Non-Land-grant Colleges of Agriculture (NLGCA) Program provides funding to NLGCA institutions supporting educational, research, and outreach activities that address priority concerns of national, regional, state, and local interest.  To determine if an institution is eligible to be designated as an NLGCA institution as defined in the 2018 Farm Bill, please visit NIFA-19-005 NLGCA Eligibility Flow Chart resource page. This NIFA-certified designation is an eligibility requirement for the Capacity Building Grants for Non-Land-grant Colleges of Agriculture program.

    NIFA invests in and advances agricultural research, education, and Extension across the nation to make transformative discoveries that solve societal challenges. NIFA supports initiatives that ensure the long-term viability of agriculture and applies an integrated approach to ensure that groundbreaking discoveries in agriculture-related sciences and technologies reach the people who can put them into practice. In FY2020, NIFA’s total investment was $1.95 billion.

    Visit our website: www.nifa.usda.gov; Twitter: @USDA_NIFA; LinkedIn: USDA-NIFA. To learn more about NIFA’s impact on agricultural science (searchable by state or keyword), visit www.nifa.usda.gov/impacts.

  • NIFA Invests Over $1.1M for Commercial Innovations in Food Science & Nutrition

    The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) announced today an investment of over $1.1 million in grants to 11 U.S. small businesses to address emerging food safety, food processing and nutrition issues.

    “NIFA’s Small Business Innovation Research program stimulates technological innovations in the private sector and strengthens the role of federal research and development in support of small businesses,” said NIFA director Dr. Carrie Castille.  “These investments will help our nation’s small businesses improve food science and nutrition through a variety of early stage research and development projects.”

    Examples of the 11 projects awarded through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program’s Food Science and Nutrition priority area include:

    • Jun Innovations, Inc., Honolulu, Hawaii, will develop a proprietary, supercooling technology to preserve perishable probiotic products without cell damage and with extended shelf life ($100,000).
    • Stixfresh USA, Inc., of Tumwater, Washington, will test essential-oil based formulas to determine their effectiveness as a safe and natural way to suppress microbial spoilage of fresh fruit ($97,697).
    • Paragon Flavors, Inc., Belle Mead, New Jersey, will assess the viability of sprouting whole-grain rice to create nutritionally dense, sustainably enhanced, consumer-friendly food ingredients for packaged food products ($99,414).

    SBIR fosters and encourages participation by women-owned and socially or economically disadvantaged small businesses. The next Phase 1 request for SBIR applications is scheduled to open in July 2021, with a deadline in October 2021. Learn more about USDA’s Small Business Innovation Research program.

    NIFA invests in and advances agricultural research, education, and Extension across the nation to make transformative discoveries that solve societal challenges. NIFA supports initiatives that ensure the long-term viability of agriculture and applies an integrated approach to ensure that groundbreaking discoveries in agriculture-related sciences and technologies reach the people who can put them into practice. In FY2020, NIFA’s total investment was $1.95 billion.

    Visit our website: www.nifa.usda.gov; Twitter: @USDA_NIFA; LinkedIn: USDA-NIFA. To learn more about NIFA’s impact on agricultural science (searchable by state or keyword), visit www.nifa.usda.gov/impacts.

  • NIFA Invests $14.5M in Economics, Markets, Trade, Environmental and Natural Resources

    The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) has invested $14.5 million in two key programs awarded through its Agriculture and Food Research Initiative. NIFA awarded $8.6 million for 18 Economics, Markets and Trade projects, and $5.9 million for12 Environmental and Natural Resource Economics projects.

    “These investments will help our nation better promote agricultural products and maximize export markets and opportunities,” said NIFA director Dr. Carrie Castille. “This research will help U.S. farmers provide a safe, nutritious, secure food supply, while enhancing rural prosperity and economic development.”

    Some projects funded from the Economics, Markets and Trade grants priority area include: A University of Arizona study, “Using Field Level Soil Quality Data for Crop Insurance: A Big Data Simulation and Credibility Approach to Improve Crop Insurance Pricing and Agricultural Land Sustainability Practice,” will explore an improved crop insurance premium pricing method that uses soil information and big weather data to increase premium pricing accuracy. Tufts University’s “From Scarcity to Prosperity: Nutrition and Food Spending Goals and Constraints for Low-Income Americans,” will assess low-income consumers’ food aspirations and nutritional perspectives, and relax constraints to achieving healthy, affordable diets.

    “Natural resources are critical to sustainable food, fiber, timber and bioenergy production,” Dr. Castille said. “Enhancing the relationship between farms and forestlands can improve the environment and provide ecosystem services that create carbon sequestration, clean air and water, recreation, and biodiversity.”

    Some research funded from the Environmental and Natural Resource Economics priority area include: University of Arkansas’ project, “Performance Feedbacks and Peer Comparisons in Irrigation Management,” to help producers make more informed irrigation management decisions. Purdue University’s project, “A Retrospective Assessment of Conservation Cost Sharing`s Success in Controlling Invasive Plants in Nonindustrial Private Forests,” to assess the effectiveness of cost sharing in controlling invasive plants and improving environmental quality in private forests.

    NIFA invests in and advances agricultural research, education, and Extension across the nation to make transformative discoveries that solve societal challenges. NIFA supports initiatives that ensure the long-term viability of agriculture and applies an integrated approach to ensure that groundbreaking discoveries in agriculture-related sciences and technologies reach the people who can put them into practice. In FY2020, NIFA’s total investment was $1.95 billion.

  • Healthy Roots, Healthy Trees: HLB & Soil Microbes

    The rhizosphere, defined as the soil environment that surrounds the plant roots, is a rich and diverse habitat for microbes. Some members of the rhizosphere microbiome (or collection of microbes), are good, others bad while many are just there and don’t provide any benefits or harm to the host. One function of the good microbes in the rhizosphere is to help facilitate the availability and assimilation of nutrients and water from the rhizosphere. Just like the human gut, the plant rhizosphere conveys key nutritional functions and the analogy was made that “plants wear their gut on the outside”. One example is the symbiotic relationship between legumes (peas, beans) and rhizobia. Those bacteria help the plant fix atmospheric nitrogen in exchange for carbon supply. Another example is the symbiotic relationship between the plant and mycorrhizal fungi, whereby the mycorrhizae receive carbon from the plant in exchange for increased nutrient uptake (principally phosphorus and nitrogen). There is undeniable evidence that plants have developed a mechanism for recruiting good microbes to cope with environmental stress such as protection against opportunistic pathogens or drought. The rise of ‘omics’ technologies have helped profile entire microbial communities associated with plants and shed light in their biological functions. This research has fueled the development of novel commercial bioproducts to address the increasing consumer’s demand of environmentally-friendly products. As a result, there has been several commercial ‘probiotics’ and ‘prebiotics’ that have been marketed for agricultural use including many biocontrol agents such as fungal- (e.g., Trichoderma) and bacterial- based (e.g., Bacillus, Streptomyces, or Pseudomonas) bioproducts.

    One goal of my research program is to identify beneficial microbes for tree and vines crops, promote practices that support the presence and abundance of beneficial microbes and figure out how good microbes help combat pathogens and support plant health. As part of a collaborative project (UC Riverside, University of Florida, USDA-ARS) funded by the California Citrus Research Board and the USDA-NIFA, we profiled the microbiome of citrus trees in the context of Huanglongbing disease (or HLB). HLB is a highly destructive and lethal disease to all commercial citrus cultivars making it a threat to citrus production globally. Finding strategies that do not only rely exclusively on management of the insect vector of the bacterium (the Asian Citrus Psyllid), is a priority to the citrus industry. In our research, we found that there were significant tissue-specific microbial shifts occurring within the citrus microbiome as trees get sicker, especially in the root compartment. As HLB progressed, there were depletions of beneficial species in roots, such as mycorrhizal fungi, and enrichments of parasitic microorganisms, such as Fusarium and Phytophthora (see Figure). HLB-affected trees decline because of the clogging the phloem sieve tubes, which limit movement of sap and translocation of sugar to the roots, hence leading to feeder root collapse. Once tree is weakened, it becomes more susceptible to pathogens such as Phytophthora which further weakens the trees and exacerbate above ground HLB symptoms. In addition, several studies from Florida suggested that cultural practices that supported root health and rhizosphere microbiome richness and diversity limited root collapse.

    Figure: Citrus decline caused by HLB (https://apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/10.1094/PBIOMES-04-20-0027- R – Ginnan et al. 2020. Phytobiomes); canopy thinning, wood dieback, feeder roots decline, collapse of beneficial microbes and enrichment of pathogens in roots.

    Our group was recently awarded another research funding by the USDA-NIFA Emergency Citrus Disease Research and Extension program (project director, M.C. Roper, Microbiology and Plant Pathology, UC Riverside). This research effort in collaboration with UC Agricultural and Natural Resources, UC Davis, University of Florida, and the USDA-ARS aims at investigating the root collapse associated with HLB- impacted trees and finding ways to mitigate it by promoting root health. In the proposed work, we will test how different sectors of the root microbiome contribute to or lessen fibrous root loss and if soil amendments (e.g., humic acid treatment, mulching) and planting of HLB tolerant rootstocks (Poncirus trifoliata and P. trifoliata hybrids) can be used to mitigate root loss associated with HLB in Florida, and how tree respond to those practices under a HLB free environment in California. While these approaches will not cure trees from HLB, it will provide a science-based information for strategies that support root and tree health and sustain orchard longevity until remedies are discovered. — By Philippe Rolsausen, Professor in Cooperative Extension, UC Riverside

  • NIFA Invests $4.8 Million to Train Ag Workforce Through Community Colleges

    Today, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) announced an investment of $4.8 million to support 12 projects that will offer workforce training by community colleges. These awards are made possible through the Agricultural and Food Research Initiative’s (AFRI) Agricultural Workforce Training program priority area. This is the first time that the NIFA has specifically targeted community colleges to increase training opportunities for the food and agricultural workforce sector.

    “Community colleges provide substantial workforce development throughout the nation,” said NIFA Director Scott Angle. “These awards will lead to workers earning a two-year degree or an industry-accepted credential, which will open better job opportunities in the food and agricultural sector.”

    The 12 awardees were selected from over 30 applications after and evaluated by a peer panel knowledgeable about both community colleges and workforce training. “The community colleges and cooperating Institutions range geographically from Rhode Island to Hawaii,” said Angle. “Training subject areas include improving worker skills in nursery production, pesticide application, aquaponics, hydraulic systems, leadership for workers in rural areas, and more.” While diverse in geography and subject matter, the successful projects have three things in common:

    1. Projects must result in needed workforce training at community colleges;
    2. Projects must provide experiential learning opportunities that allow students more time working in job simulation or ‘on-the-job’ training environments; and
    3. Trainees must either receive a two-year degree or an industry recognized credential that will improve their skillset and employability.

    The twelve organizations receiving the awards are:

    West Hills Community College; Coalinga, California – $500,000
    Dakota College at Bottineau; Bottineau, North Dakota – $500,000
    Virginia Cooperative Extension, Virginia Tech University; Blacksburg, Virginia – $500,000
    Michigan State University; East Lansing, Michigan – $499,999
    South Central College; North Mankato, Minnesota – $499,657
    Rhode Island Nursery and Landscape Institute; Kingston; Rhode Island – $499,654
    University of Hawaii Systems; Kahului, Hawaii – $498,759
    Cornell University; Ithaca, New York – $495,799
    Bismarck State College; Bismarck, North Dakota – $458,839
    Chemeketa Community College; Salem, Oregon – $273,295
    Pittsburg State University; Pittsburg, Kansas – $95,254
    Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, Green Bay, Wisconsin – $24,897

    Award grant details can be found on NIFA’s website.

    NIFA’s mission is to invest in and advance agricultural research, education, and extension to solve societal challenges. NIFA’s investments in transformative science directly support the long-term prosperity and global preeminence of U.S. agriculture. To learn more about NIFA’s impact on agricultural science, visit https://nifa.usda.gov/impacts, sign up for email updates or follow us on Twitter @USDA_NIFA, #NIFAimpacts.

  • Nitrogen-Efficient Fertilizer Research Could Have Lasting Impact

    The world’s population will continue to grow, but the amount of arable land to feed that population will not.

    “So people will continue to add more fertilizers to grow more crops in the same areas,” says Jonas Baltrusaitis, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering in Lehigh University’s P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, and a recipient of the 2020 ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering Lectureship Award. “You can’t grow crops without fertilizer. It’s just not happening.”

    While a boon to harvests, fertilizers exact a toll on the environment. Their production alone is extremely energy intensive and a significant source of greenhouse gases, and when nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus aren’t fully taken up by plants, they can leach into groundwater and wash into waterways. Excess nutrients can cause eutrophication of water bodies where algal blooms deprive the ecosystem of oxygen, killing wildlife and producing toxins that can harm humans.

    It’s a vicious cycle that Baltrusaitis hopes to one day break. He recently received a four-year, nearly $435,000 grant through the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) for his proposal, “Mechanochemical Synthesis of Nitrogen Efficient Fertilizer Materials.”

    NIFA’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) is the leading competitive grants program for agricultural sciences in the United States. According to NIFA, “AFRI-funded science is vital to meeting food, fiber, and fuel demands as the world’s population races toward a projected 9 billion by 2050 concomitant with diminishing land and water resources and increasingly variable climatic conditions.”

    Baltrusaitis’ team has developed a dry mechanochemical synthesis method of a family of urea ionic cocrystals that can serve as functional fertilizers that significantly slow down urea hydrolysis in soil, reduce ammonia emissions, and extend availability of nitrogen to plants. He is combining water soluble urea with various nutrients containing low solubility minerals or even industrial waste, such as drywall gypsum, to improve nitrogen management efficiency.

    “We’re re-designing fertilizer materials to be much more stable in the environment,” he says. “If they don’t decompose as fast, they’re available to the plant for longer, so those nutrients are going into the food chain rather than being wasted and damaging the environment.”

    The potential impact is global, and the technology is being developed to be easily inserted into existing supply chains, says Baltrusaitis. His ultimate goal is to design nitrogen-efficient novel fertilizer materials that can be used in field trials with local Pennsylvania farmers, where his team can test improvements in yields and emissions.

    Coming from the USDA, the award is a unique one for Lehigh, he says.

    “And it’s one that will help educate the next generation of engineers as they prepare to address emerging global challenges.

    About Jonas Baltrusaitis

    ChBE researcher Jonas Baltrusaitis is “breaking the cycle.” His USDA-funded research aims to make fertilizer more effective for crop growth and less destructive for the environment.

    Jonas Baltrusaitis is an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Lehigh University. He holds a PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Iowa, where he conducted postdoctoral research and served in numerous roles, including adjunct assistant professor and associate director of the Central Microscopy Research Facility. He was an assistant professor of chemical engineering at the University of Twente (the Netherlands) before joining the faculty of the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science in 2014.

    Baltrusaitis’ research interests span numerous areas of sustainable catalytic conversion, including: natural gas component catalytic conversion to high value products, biomass catalytic upgrading, sustainable sulfur and phosphorus processing, renewable energy utilization in wastewater processing, low concentration organic wastewater stream treatment, emerging contaminant remediation and environmental catalysis, surface sensitive spectroscopies, and data processing method development.

    His research has been funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, Pennsylvania Infrastructure Technology Alliance, Defense Logistics Agency, and Department of Defense, among others. His work has been published in high-impact journals such as the Journal of American Chemical Society, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, ACS Catalysis, Applied Catalysis B: Environmental, and Chemical Communications.

    Baltrusaitis is a member of the American Chemical Society and AIChE and received a 2020 ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering Lectureship Award for his work in advanced materials science and supramolecular chemistry, applying concepts of sustainable chemistry and engineering to the delivery of more sustainable fertilizers and nutrients.

    At Lehigh, Baltrusaitis has been recognized with the university’s Libsch Early Career Research Award (Spring 2018) as well as a P.C. Rossin Assistant Professorship (2017-2019). He currently directs the chemical engineering M.Eng. distance education program and advises numerous PhD students.

  • USDA Invests $17.7 Million in Plant Health and Production Workforce

    Washington, D. C., (June 1, 2017) – The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) today announced 54 grants totaling more than $17.7 million for plant research that helps optimize crop production, mitigate disease, and increase yield. The funding is made possible through NIFA’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program, authorized by the 2014 Farm Bill.

    “Plants are the foundation of diet for both humans and animals,” said NIFA Director Sonny Ramaswamy. “It is imperative to invest in research to stay ahead of the biological and environmental constraints, and develop new technologies to produce a secure, nutritious food supply for a growing population.”

    AFRI is USDA’s flagship competitive grants program for foundational and translational research, education, and extension projects in the food and agricultural sciences. The AFRI program area of Plant Health and Production and Plant Products (PHPPP) supports projects on foundational knowledge of agricultural production systems, pests, and beneficial species in agricultural production systems, physiology of agricultural plants, and plant breeding for agricultural production.

    FY16 Plant Health and Production and Plant Products grants include:

    Foundational Knowledge of Agricultural Production Systems

    • University of California, Berkeley, California, $500,000
    • Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, $400,000
    • Iowa State University of Science and Technology, Ames, Iowa, $500,000
    • University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, $500,000
    • Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, $400,000
    • Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, $500,000
    • Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan, $500,000
    • Alcorn State University, Lorman, Mississippi, $400,000
    • University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska, $461,187
    • Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, $461,187
    • University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, $500,000

    Plant Breeding for Agricultural Production

    • University of California, Davis, California, $490,000
    • University of California, Davis, California, $490,000
    • University of California, Davis, California, $25,000
    • University of California, Davis, California, $25,000
    • USDA Agricultural Research Service, Midwest Area, Peoria, Illinois, $490,000
    • Iowa State University of Science and Technology, Ames, Iowa, $490,000
    • Iowa State University of Science and Technology, Ames, Iowa, $490,000
    • Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, Mississippi, $150,000
    • University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, $20,000
    • Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana, $244,618
    • Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, New Jersey, $456,727
    • Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York, $25,000
    • University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, North Carolina, $490,000
    • Gordon Research Conferences, West Kingston, Rhode Island, $25,000
    • South Dakota State University, Brookings, South Dakota, $244,618
    • Texas A&M AgriLife Research, College Station, Texas, $490,000
    • University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, $490,000
    • University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, $25,000

    Physiology of Agricultural Plants

    • Chapman University, Orange, California, $149,980
    • University of California, Davis, California, $499,995
    • University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, $150,000
    • University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, $24,950
    • Florida International University, Miami, Florida, $116,830
    • University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, $455,000
    • University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, $451,747
    • University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois, $410,000
    • USDA Agricultural Research Service, Midwest Area, Peoria, Illinois, $410,000
    • Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, $470,000
    • Louisiana State University and A&M College, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, $499,627
    • American Society of Plant Biologists, Rockville, Maryland, $25,000
    • University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, $499,032
    • University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, $425,200
    • Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma, $135,578
    • Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, $470,000
    • Gordon Research Conferences, West Kingston, Rhode Island, $20,740
    • Gordon Research Conferences, West Kingston, Rhode Island, $18,500
    • University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, $410,000
    • University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, $17,500
    • Texas A&M AgriLife Research, College Station, Texas, $455,000
    • Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, $470,000
    • Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, $410,000
    • Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, $494,390
    • University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, $25,000

    Among these FY16 projects, NIFA and a multistate consortium led by the Iowa Corn Promotion Board, in response to the commodity board provision in the 2014 Farm Bill, are co-funding Iowa State University researchers to study the use of soil nitrate sensors and genotyping to improve yield prediction models for next generation breeders. Among other projects, Michigan Technological University researchers will investigate novel timber production systems to protect productivity and sustainability of northern hardwoods in the North-Central region. Rutgers University researchers will target cranberry fruit chemistry to develop cultivars for use in healthier, low-sugar products.

    More information on these projects is available on the NIFA website.

    To date, NIFA has awarded more than $68 million through the PHPPP program. Past projects include a University of Pennsylvania effort to aid plant pollination by producing improved honeybees. A University of Florida project sought to develop drought-resistant peanut cultivars and developed an irrigation-scheduling tool.