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

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90 Grants found

FFAR Fellows Program 2024 Cohort

FFAR Vet Fellows Sixth Cohort

FFAR-OCP Disruptive Fertilizer Technology Fellowship First Cohort

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Kirchner Food Fellowship HBCU 2023-2024 Cohort

Kirchner Food Fellowship Inaugural HBCU Cohort (2021-22)

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FFAR Vet Fellows Fifth Cohort

FFAR Vet Fellows Fourth Cohort

FFAR Vet Fellows Third Cohort

FFAR Vet Fellows Second Cohort

FFAR Vet Fellows Inaugural Cohort

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National Academy of Sciences Prize in Food & Agriculture Research: Huaijun Zhou

The Revitalization of Indigenous Crops in the Southwest

Developing circular urban food systems for a rapidly growing desert city

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Big Data to Improve and Sustain Wheat End-Use Quality in the Face of Increasingly Variable Climate Scenarios

Evaluating the use of calcium silicate amendments to manage the bioavailability of organic carbon in agricultural soils

Advancing the Design and Fabrication of Biopolymer-based Nanocomposites for Sustainable Food Packaging

Using a novel RNA therapy to tackle dual threat of tomato spotted wilt virus, a pandemic agricultural pathogen and its supervector, thrips

Harnessing mycorrhizal-microbial synergies for agricultural resilience and health

Establish Power-to-Food by Cultivating and Processing Hydrogenotrophic Single Cells to Design New Sustainable Protein Supply Chains Without Arable Land

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Food security in the Anthropocene in Islander Communities

Next-Generation Carbon Capture for Agricultural Crop Applications

Orthogonal Nano-Engineering (ONE) for Rational Design of Food Contact Surfaces

Establishing Viable Organic Orchard Crop Systems for the Northeast U.S.

Kirchner Food Fellowship HBCU 2022-23 Cohort

National Academy of Sciences Prize in Food & Agriculture Research: David Lobell

Recycling nutrients for robust agricultural supply chains

Next-generation phenotyping and genomics for identifying, breeding, and managing more sustainable beef cattle

A Big Data Tool for Urban Tree Crop Selection Under Climate Change

Leveraging Phasic Environment and Nutrient Solution Management to Improve Resource Use Efficiency of Indoor Vertical Farming

Enabling sustainable soil and water management through microbe-powered RF soil sensing

Agroecosystem responses to climate change, biodiversity loss and food insecurity in the United States and Latin America

Targeted On-Demand Disease Management Practices/Therapies

National Academy of Sciences Prize in Food & Agriculture Research: Rodolphe Barrangou

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Establishing Predictive Genomics to Improve Pollinator Health

Holistic Irrigation Strategies for Climate-Smart Agriculture

Tribal Agriculture Fellowship Inaugural Cohort

Reinvigorating Soybean Yield for 21st Century Agriculture

Understanding the roots of soil health

Enhancing the sustainability of finfish aquaculture to increase production and public acceptance

Digging deeper: Removing the barriers to soil compaction mitigation

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Fermentation to unlock the potential of underutilized Indigenous plants – an integrated traditional ecological knowledge innovation toward bio- and techno-functional benefits

Improving soil health by engineering a rhizobacterium to depend on a plant and stimulate its immune system

Creating a nitrogen fixing symbiont for cereal crops

Advancing Water Policy for Agricultural Sustainability

Building our understanding of soil health practice adoption through knowledge co-production with farmers

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

National Academy of Sciences Prize in Food & Agriculture Research: Zachary Lippman

Field-deployable biosensors for managing animal health

A Multi-Scale Approach to Unearth the Root of Plant Disease Resistance

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An Integrative Approach to Biofortification of Staple Crops

Uncovering the Genetic Architecture of Inducible Chemical Defenses in Crop and Wild Sunflower for the Sustainable Control of Pests and Pathogens

Engineering crops for cultivation in controlled environments

Developing Novel Strategies for Improved Control and Sustainability of Grapevine Bunch Rot Management

Harnessing the soil microbiome to increase soil health and plant productivity

Kirchner Food Fellowship 2020-21 Cohort

Kirchner Food Fellowship 2019-20 Cohort

Kirchner Food Fellowship 2018-19 Cohort

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Metagenomic Probes for the Rapid Identification of the Microbiome Community in A Wheat Rhizospheremodel System

A Systematic Approach to Improve Heifer Selection and the Sustainability of Beef Production.

Improving the Nutritional Quality of Tomatoes

Harnessing Multi-Trophic Chemical Ecology to Obtain Sustainable Pest Control and Improved Soil Health

National Academy of Sciences Prize in Food and Agriculture Research: Elizabeth Ainsworth

A Coupled Natural-Human System Approach to Solving Locust Plagues

Developing CRISPR-Cpf1 Genome Editing Technologies for Crop Improvement

Towards Production of Residue-Free Healthy Fruit Crops

Effects of Asymptomatic Listeriosis on Dairy Cattle Fecal Microbiota

Direct Linkage of Dietary Components with Metabolizers in the Microbiota

Harnessing Endophytes to Improve Crop Efficiency and Production

Innovations in the Food Supply Chain to Reduce Food Waste

Optimizing Water Use in Agriculture by Stacking Conservation Practices

Innovation at the Nexus of Computational, Membrane and Plant Biology

Diet, the human gastrointestinal microbiome and metabolic health

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A Novel Bioassay for Culturing and Characterizing Fastidious Phytopathogens

Using Active Organic Matter Tests to Help Predict Crop Nutrient Needs

Plant-Nanoparticle Hybrids: Optimize Crop Engineering and Nutrient Delivery

Improving Simulations of Water Dynamics and Crop Yield in the Corn Belt

Individually-targeted incentives, diet quality and health outcomes among adults

Developing Massively Parallel Sequence for Agricultural Surveillance

Advances in Water Limited Irrigation Management

Going Back to the Roots To Transform Soil Health into Yield

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Using Eye Tracking to Better Understand Food Choices

Enhancing Crop Pollination, Pest Control and Yield in Urban Agriculture

Building Soil Health Through Rotational Diversity and Soil Microorganisms

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Evaluating the use of calcium silicate amendments to manage the bioavailability of organic carbon in agricultural soils

Year Awarded  2023

Total award amount   $449,607

Location   New Haven, CT

Grantee Institution   Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station Research Foundation Inc.

Organic carbon greatly benefits soil health and functions such as crop productivity, limiting erosion and sequestering carbon dioxide. Dr. Itamar Shabtai is evaluating the interactions of calcium inputs, currently studied for sequestering inorganic carbon, on soil organic carbon. The project is examining how these inputs affect soil organic carbon and soil health and whether they change soils’ microbial community.

Advancing the Design and Fabrication of Biopolymer-based Nanocomposites for Sustainable Food Packaging

Year Awarded  2023

Total award amount   $450,000

Location   Clemson, SC

Grantee Institution   Clemson University

Current food packaging still relies on non-biodegradable plastics, which persist in the environment for a long time and can harm wildlife. Dr. Zhaoxu Meng's research aims to design and fabricate high-performance packaging materials with sustainable, biodegradable biopolymers derived from renewable sources like food and agriculture waste and byproducts. Meng is using advanced technologies like computational modeling and artificial intelligence to guide the hypothesis-driven, bottom-up—linking molecular structure to materials' overall performance—design and fabrication processes.

Using a novel RNA therapy to tackle dual threat of tomato spotted wilt virus, a pandemic agricultural pathogen and its supervector, thrips

Year Awarded  2023

FFAR award amount   $449,158

Total award amount   $449,158

Location   College Station, TX

Matching Funders   Texas A&M AgriLife Research

Grantee Institution   Texas A&M AgriLife Research

Currently, producers manage the tomato spotted wilt virus through genetically resistant varieties of tomato and pepper as well as insecticides to control thrips, an insect that spreads the virus. However, novel strains of tomato spotted wilt virus have overcome the genetic resistance, and thrips have developed insecticide resistance. Dr. Kiran Gadhave is developing a type of RNA that can deliver targeted therapeutics, both preventative and curative, specifically tailored against the virus and thrips to the tomato and pepper, helping to develop a novel, sustainable, economical, eco-friendly tool for pest management.

Harnessing mycorrhizal-microbial synergies for agricultural resilience and health

Year Awarded  2023

Total award amount   $449,897

Location   Amherst, MA

Grantee Institution   University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Beneficial partnerships that form between mycorrhizal fungi and most agricultural crop families can support crop productivity and soil health. Recent research shows that these benefits partly depend upon interactions between the fungi and other soil microorganisms. Through interdisciplinary collaborations and analytical approaches that span molecular measurements and cellular imaging to field trials, Dr. Rachel Hestrin is investigating how mycorrhizal-microbial relationships facilitate soil nutrient cycling, organic matter formation and other processes that promote soil health.

Food security in the Anthropocene in Islander Communities

Year Awarded  2023

Total award amount   $449,942

Location   Honolulu, HI

Grantee Institution   University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

Dr. Subhashni Raj is analyzing how the COVID pandemic disruptions affected food supply chains in communities in Hawaii and Fiji and the role the presence of traditional and ancestral food systems may have played in shoring up food security. By understanding the role of Indigenous and ancestral food pathways in maintaining food security during a crisis, Raj is developing plans to restore traditional and Indigenous food pathways into the food systems.

Next-Generation Carbon Capture for Agricultural Crop Applications

Year Awarded  2023

Total award amount   $450,000

Location   La Jolla, CA

Grantee Institution   The Scripps Research Institute

The enzyme RuBisCo plays a key role in photosynthesis as it binds directly to carbon dioxide. Dr. Ahmed Badran’s lab developed RuBisCo alternatives that improve photosynthetic efficiency, and the research team is aiming to apply these alternative enzymes to a variety of crops. By increasing photosynthetic efficiency, the researcher hopes to increase crops’ growth rate, yield and tolerance to high temperatures and drought.

Orthogonal Nano-Engineering (ONE) for Rational Design of Food Contact Surfaces

Year Awarded  2023

FFAR award amount   $448,141

Total award amount   $541,173

Location   Blacksburg, VA

Matching Funders   Virginia Tech

Grantee Institution   Virginia Tech

In food processing and packaging environments, food contact surfaces often harbor microbes, compromising food safety and quality. Dr. Yifan Cheng is advancing nanoengineering and enhancing knowledge of these interactions to develop surfaces with nanostructures that disrupt bacterial cell walls upon contact, effectively killing bacteria without using biocides or sanitizers.

Establishing Viable Organic Orchard Crop Systems for the Northeast U.S.

Year Awarded  2023

Total award amount   $449,841

Location   Kutztown, PA

Grantee Institution   Rodale Institute

In many temperate, humid climates, perennial crop production has focused on fruits such as apples and peaches, which are increasingly at risk from climate change, pests and pathogens. Dr. Leigh Archer is examining the viability of alternative, low-input perennials for the Northeast, such as hazelnuts, which can better withstand climate and pest threats and provide diversity to Northeastern U.S. agriculture.

FFAR Vet Fellows Fourth Cohort

Year Awarded  2022

Total award amount   $10,000 per student

Location   Washington, D.C.

Matching Funders   American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC)

The Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) announced the 13 recipients of the 2022 Veterinary Student Research Fellowships (Vet Fellows) in partnership with the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC). This fellowship creates opportunities for veterinary students to pursue research on global food security and sustainable animal production.

Kirchner Food Fellowship HBCU 2022-23 Cohort

Year Awarded  2022

Location   Jacksonville, FL & Washington, D.C.

Matching Funders   The Kirchner Impact Foundation

The Kirchner Food Fellowship, an initiative of the Kirchner Impact Foundation, announced the fellows for the second Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) cohort. As a pioneering program in developing the next generation of venture capital in food and agriculture, the program launched the dedicated HBCU cohort to help address the lack of diversity within the venture capital sector.