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FFAR Grant Develops Heat-Tolerant Seeds 

Periodic Table of Food Initiative 

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $5,000,000

Total award amount   $10,000,000

Location   Washington, D.C.

Matching Funders   The Rockefeller Foundation, Seerave Foundation

Grantee Institution   Oregon State University

Sustainable, diverse foods that meet individuals’ nutritional needs can prevent diet-related illnesses and malnourishment; however, scientific understanding of the nutritional benefits of individual foods is still rudimentary. At most, 150 of foods’ biochemical components are tracked in conventional databases, representing only a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of biochemicals in food. The Periodic Table of Food Initiative is a global effort to standardize food analysis and better understand foods’ impact on human health, agriculture and nutrition.

FFAR and OFRF Renew Partnership to Improve Soil Health Research 

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $66,000

Total award amount   $120,000

Location   Santa Cruz, CA

Matching Funders   Organic Farming Research Foundation

Grantee Institution   Organic Farming Research Foundation

The Organic Farming Research Foundation and the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research are continuing their partnership to fund on-farm research advancing the climate benefits of organic agriculture systems. Priorities will focus specifically on the potential of organic agriculture to sequester carbon, mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, reduce the environmental impacts of fertilizers and pesticides and build resilience to a changing climate.

Breeding drought & heat tolerant wheat 

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $999,736

Total award amount   $2,141,527

Location   Pullman, WA

Program   Seeding Solutions

Matching Funders   Flinders University, LongReach Plant Breeders, O.A. Vogel Wheat Research Fund, Washington Grain Commission, Washington State University

Grantee Institution   Washington State University

Wheat and other plants avoid overheating by evaporating water from leaf surfaces. However, this mechanism is inefficient if the soil moisture is scarce. As climate change disrupts precipitation patterns, causing drought conditions to become more prevalent, wheat breeders must pursue every genetic advantage possible to increase the crop’s climate resiliency. Washington State University researchers are using a new technique developed in their lab to identify genes promoting heat and drought resiliency in wheat.

FFAR and OFRF Renew Partnership to Improve Soil Health Research 

U.S. Dairy Net Zero Initiative: Improving Dairy On-Farm Sustainability through Improved Soil Health and Manure Management 

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $10,000,000

Total award amount   $23,200,000

Location   Rosemont, IL

Matching Funders   Dairy Management Inc. (DMI), Newtrient and other Net Zero Initiative partners

Grantee Institution   Dairy Research Institute

Dairy farmers face increasing pressure from the private and public sectors to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This grant to the Dairy Research Institute addresses research gaps in feed production and manure-based products that support the dairy community’s Net Zero Initiative, an industry-wide effort to adopt practices and technologies that reduce GHG emissions and improve environmental health.

FFAR Grant Builds Supply Chains for Environmentally Beneficial Crops 

FFAR Partners with the Kirchner Impact Foundation to Support the Kirchner Food Fellowship – HBCU Cohort 

Unravelling the genetics of cowpea adaptation to high temperatures for legume improvement 

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $490,617

Total award amount   $981,233

Location   Fort Collins, CO

Program   Increasing Climate Resilience in Crops

Matching Funders   Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Grantee Institution   Colarado State University

Cowpea is an important crop nutritionally and economically for smallholder farmers in Africa and other regions. It is also one of the legumes most tolerant to high temperatures, making it key to understanding the genetics of adaptation to heat stress. Still, relatively high night temperatures significantly reduce grain yields. This research is examining bioclimatic data—the relationship between climate and biological matter—and genetic information from cowpea varieties to search for gene variants associated with increased temperature tolerance.

Leveraging landrace genomics to rapidly engineer thermotolerant cassava 

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $499,999

Total award amount   $999,999

Location   Davis, CA

Program   Increasing Climate Resilience in Crops

Matching Funders   Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Grantee Institution   University of California Davis

While scientists now wield breakthrough technologies to edit crop genomes to enable climate resiliency, there is still a gap in knowledge of which genes must be edited. This research is leveraging the valuable but largely untapped reservoir of information stored in the genomes of crop landraces—traditional varieties adapted to diverse environments. Combining newly developed genomic analysis and climate modelling approaches, researchers are identifying gene variants predicted to be adaptive to future climates, with an emphasis on temperature extremes, and using genetic engineering techniques to generate cassava varieties to accelerate breeding.