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

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384 Grants found

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National Academy of Sciences Prize in Food & Agriculture Research: Christina Grozinger

Year Awarded  2021

Total award amount   $100,000

Location   State College, PA

Matching Funders   Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Dr. Christina Grozinger was awarded the 2021 National Academy of Sciences Prize in Food & Agriculture Research for research seeking to understand the primary factors driving declines in wild and managed bee populations. She is working to develop approaches that can be used to support bees in urban, agricultural and natural landscapes. The Grozinger Lab uses an integrative approach encompassing genomics, physiology, behavior, chemical ecology and ecology.

FFAR Awards $2 Million Grant to Improve Sustainability in Corn Production

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $2,044,214

Total award amount   $4,089,857

Location   Ames, Iowa

Matching Funders   Iowa State University, Bayer Crop Science, The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Purdue University and Donald Danforth Plant Science Center

Maize breeding programs have increased corn yields over the years by altering plant characteristics (traits). Yet, our knowledge on which traits have been changed is limited while their impact on sustainability is relatively unknown. Led by Dr. Sotirios Archontoulis, Iowa State University researchers are examining corn hybrid characteristics at an unprecedented scale to analyze yield trends in the US Corn Belt, which includes most of the Midwest.

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.

Periodic Table of Food Initiative

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $5,000,000

Total award amount   $10,000,000

Location   Washington, DC

Matching Funders   The Rockefeller Foundation, Seerave Foundation

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, Calif.

Matching Funders   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

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.

SKY HIGH Consortium Agreement

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $1,061,576

Total award amount   $6,630,342

Location   Wageningen, The Netherlands

Matching Funders   Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions, Bayer, Bosman Van Zaal, Certhon, Dutch Research Council (NWO), Fresh Forward, Grodan, GrowX, Own Greens, Signify, Solynta, Unilever, Van Bergen Kolpa Architects

Vertical farming provides greater control of climate and nutrition conditions than outdoor or greenhouse facilities. Crops grown in vertical farming environments have the potential for enhanced nutritional value, longer shelf life, better taste and a shorter supply chain – plus they require little water and do not need pesticides. Yet, there are few researchers adapting crops to make them economical and sustainable in these production systems. SKY HIGH: Vertical Farming, a revolution in plant production, is a program to advance vertical farming by researching plant genetics and indoor growing conditions that help crops thrive and enhance desired qualities.

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, Illinois

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

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.

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

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, California

Program   Increasing Climate Resilience in Crops

Matching Funders   Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

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.