Awarded Grants
Below is a listing of our awarded grants that tackle big food and agriculture challenges.

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2 Grants found

Accelerating Breeding Technology to Develop New Crops

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CRISPR-Combo Allows Gene Editing and Culture Regeneration

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $664,000

Total award amount   $739,000

Location   College Park, MD

Program   Accelerated Crop Breeding

Matching Funders   BASF

While gene editing technology has improved crop breeding and adaptation, the process of regrowing a plant from edited cells is costly, lengthy and unpredictable. Many popular crops are difficult to regenerate with existing methods. Researchers at the University of Maryland are developing a CRISPR-Combo system that will use CRISPR gene editing technology to kick-start the regeneration process.

Accelerating Breeding Technology to Develop New Crops

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $385,512

Total award amount   $535,512

Location   Davis, California

Program   Accelerated Crop Breeding

Matching Funders   Limagrain Europe

Editing a plant’s genes can help the plant thrive during drought, extreme heat and other climate change-related crises. While this technology is key to future food security, it is expensive and relies on time-consuming tissue culturing – putting it out of reach of smaller labs. Due to the expense, gene editing is almost exclusively used on major crops such as corn. Researchers are developing accessible gene editing technology that also allows faster plant growth.