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

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59 Grants found

An International Collaboration for Combating Fusarium Wilt in Cotton

Field trial of rice gene-edited rice for drought tolerance

Elucidating the genetic basis for sub-tropical flowering in hemp

Breeding and Characterizing New Cultivars of Grain and Fiber Hemp

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Plant-XR: A New Generation of Breeding Tools for Extra-Resilient Crops

Fast Tracking Climate Solutions from Global Germplasm Banks

Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize & Wheat for Improved Livelihoods

Harnessing Translational Research Across a Global Wheat Improvement Network for Climate Resilience

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Assessment of the Available Literature and Gap Analysis on the Use of Industrial Hemp as an Animal Feed

FFAR Grant Promotes Sorghum Health Benefits

Genomic foundation for neodomestication and breeding of a halophytic grain crop, Distichlis palmeri

Enabling African Scientists: The African Plant Breeding Academy CRISPR Course

High dimensional phenomics and automation to transform cost and timeframe of early stage domestication of wild plants

Creating Science-Based Strategies for Gene Editing Communications

Scalable breeding for plant growth to address the challenges of climate change

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Improving Protein Content & Quality in Peas

Scaling Crops for Sustainable Water Management: Building Supply Chains

Capitalizing on the Unique Viscoelastic Properties of Corn Zein for A New Commercial Plant-Based Protein

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

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Rapid Response to Coffee Leaf Rust

Breeding drought & heat tolerant wheat

Leveraging landrace genomics to rapidly engineer thermotolerant cassava

Using novel genes from wild germplasm to boost protein content in cultivated chickpea

Genetic and microbial determinants of nitrogen fixation in a Sierra Mixe landrace of maize

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Genome Editing Wheat for Durable & Sustainable Disease Resistance

Accelerated Development of Crops of the Future

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

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

Improving the Nutritional Quality of Tomatoes

Stopping A New Threat to The Lettuce Industry in Florida: Fusarium Wilt

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Capitalizing on the Unique Viscoelastic Properties of Corn Zein for A New Commercial Plant-Based Protein

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $387,556

Total award amount   $387,556

Location   West Lafayette, IN

Program   Plant Protein Enhancement Project

Matching Funders   Open Philanthropy

Plant-based protein alternatives are a rapidly expanding market. Soy and pea proteins can closely replicate the texture of meats, but they lack the chewy quality of meat, known as viscoelasticity, which creates a tender bite. Researchers at Purdue University are studying the viscoelasticity of a corn protein, zein, to develop a new commercial meat substitute.

Fast Tracking Climate Solutions from Global Germplasm Banks

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $5,000,000

Total award amount   $11,500,000

Location   Texcoco, Mexico

Matching Funders   Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Grantee Institution   CGIAR

The most dangerous impact of climate change is the disruption of global agriculture and food systems through disasters such as drought, heat and flooding. These disruptions, including decreased agricultural production and reduced harvests, are hardest on the approximately half a billion smallholder farmers living on less than two dollars a day. This initiative, led by CGIAR, advances transformative approaches to expand the use of genetic diversity from germplasm banks. The research ultimately aims to develop new climate-smart crop varieties for millions of smallholder farmers worldwide.

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

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.

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.

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, CA

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.

Genetic incorporation of physiological mechanisms of high night temperature tolerance into rice improvement programs

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $384,369

Total award amount   $768,738

Location   College Station, TX

Program   Increasing Climate Resilience in Crops

Matching Funders   Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Rice, a major global food crop, is susceptible to heat stress losses in yield. Nighttime heat stress affects processes throughout the rice plant, including photosynthesis, respiration, nutrient transfer and reproduction. This research is enhancing two targeted rice genes that can provide increased tolerance when under heat stress. The first gene alters specific plant hormone responses, and the second gene enhances nutrient transfer. The project will also distribute low-cost methods for screening rice and other crops for heat stress responses based on physiological traits, aiding breeding programs in low-income countries.

Advancing methods for accelerated heat tolerance selection in peanut

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $274,754

Total award amount   $549,507

Location   Athens, GA

Program   Increasing Climate Resilience in Crops

Matching Funders   Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Peanut is a high-protein food crop grown mostly in tropical and subtropical regions, and it is directly threatened by increasing global temperature. This research is studying multiple peanut genotypes and varieties to identify genes, molecular mechanisms and photosynthetic processes related to heat stress and tolerance. The researchers are developing an automated model, the Peanut-ThermoTool, to indicate heat tolerance in peanut and rank genotypes for heat tolerance, predicting their capabilities to function during and recover after a period of heat stress. The genotypes possessing heat-tolerance traits will be available in the germplasm collection, serving as genetic resources for heat tolerance in breeding programs.

Exploiting conserved gene regulation mechanisms for genome-wide breeding for heat & broad-spectrum disease tolerance in rice

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $470,459

Total award amount   $940,917

Location   Fort Collins, CO

Program   Increasing Climate Resilience in Crops

Matching Funders   Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Developing heat and disease resistant crop varieties takes a long time, particularly because these traits are complex and controlled by multiple genes. In addition, reliable genetic markers identifying relevant traits are not readily available, making breeding more challenging. This research is developing a strategy to generate reliable markers of stress-response DNA sequences to efficiently activate genes involved in heat tolerance and disease defenses in rice. The genetic markers could be applied in any crop breeding program, whether in low- or high-income countries.

Scalable breeding for plant growth to address the challenges of climate change

Year Awarded  2020

FFAR award amount   $796,878

Total award amount   $1,593,756

Location   Ithaca, NY

Program   Seeding Solutions

Matching Funders   BASF, Limagrain, Virginia Crop Improvement Association

Climate change is creating increasingly unstable farming environments, leading to unpredictable yields and quality. Crop breeding programs aim to develop crops that can thrive despite climate instability; however, breeding programs face their own challenges in predicting how the climate will change and how crops will respond. One specific challenge to breeding programs is the lack of information about how plant genomes and growing conditions interact, and how that interaction impacts agronomic traits such as yield. Cornell University researchers are studying how different plant genomes respond to environment conditions throughout the entire growing season, with the goal of improving crops’ climate resiliency.