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

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430 Grants found

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

Year Awarded  2021

Total award amount   $450,000

Location   Newark, DE

Grantee Institution   University of DelawareUniversity of Deleware

Beneficial microbes in a plant’s rhizosphere—the root-soil interface—increase plant growth and soil health, but not enough is known about how microbes, plants and soil interact and how to ensure microbes do not spread outside of the target soil, which could have unintended consequences. This research is examining whether a laboratory microbe can provide long-lasting pathogen resistance to crops, while also preventing the microbe’s growth, allowing it to be contained to a specific area. This project furthers development of targeted capabilities in crops to help them survive future stresses.

Creating a nitrogen fixing symbiont for cereal crops

Year Awarded  2021

Total award amount   $450,000

Location   Fargo, ND

Grantee Institution   North Dakota State University

Nitrogen fertilizer increases crop yields to meet growing food demands, but because less than 50 percent of applied nitrogen fertilizer is used by plants, the excess fertilizer can threaten environmental and human health. Legume crops can create their own nitrogen through root nodule symbiosis with certain microbes. While research efforts are underway to engineer popular cereal crops to form root nodules, there is not a strong effort to generate a compatible microbial partner for these crops. This research is investigating root nodule symbiosis to develop microbes that can thrive in the cereal microbiome, initiate nodule formation and self-adapt for efficient nitrogen fixation and nutrient exchange with their host plant.

Advancing Water Policy for Agricultural Sustainability

Year Awarded  2021

Total award amount   $422,976

Location   Davis, CA

Grantee Institution   University of California Berkely

Meeting future food needs requires effectively managing scarce groundwater. California is addressing this problem through the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which ensures better groundwater use and management. This research is using the act as a case study to identify policies that enhance water sustainability and minimize regulation costs.

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

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $170,333

Total award amount   $208,712

Location   Omaha, NE

Matching Funders   The Nature Conservancy

Grantee Institution   The Nature Conservancy

A promise of big data is the ability to better understand and predict relevant social-ecological phenomena. However, modern machine learning and statistical analyses of big data often fail to embed the human context needed to uncover and predict these phenomena more fully. In this project, researchers are engaging farmers to create regressions trees—a type of decision-making algorithm—that describe individual farm-level decisions to adopt cover crops. This research is improving the efficacy of big data to predict not only when and where cover crops are likely to be adopted on the landscape but also why.

FFAR Vet Fellows Third Cohort

Year Awarded  2021

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 14 recipients of the 2021 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.

Rapid Response to Coffee Leaf Rust

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $150,000

Total award amount   $431,103

Location   Hilo, HI

Program   Rapid Outcomes from Agricultural Research

Matching Funders   The Hawaii Coffee Association, Hawaii Coffee Growers Association, The Maui Coffee Association, Purdue University, United Ka'u Farmers Cooperative , The Synergistic Hawaii Agriculture Council and the Hawaii Department of Agriculture

Grantee Institution   Synergistic Hawaii Agriculture Council

Coffee leaf rust disease is threatening the Hawaii coffee industry, the state’s second top commodity. Caused by the emerging Hemileia vastatrix fungus, coffee leaf rust attacks the leaves of coffee trees, ultimately reducing coffee trees’ yields. To address this threat, Synergistic Hawaii Agriculture Council researchers are investigating the fungus and developing tactics to mitigate its spread.

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

Grantee Institution   Penn State University

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, IA

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

Grantee Institution   Iowa State University

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 U.S. 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, CA

Program   Accelerated Crop Breeding

Matching Funders   Limagrain Europe

Grantee Institution   University of California Davis

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, 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.