H5N1 Risk to Swine Research Program
Drs. Jasmine Bruno & Megan Niederwerder
FFAR » Accelerated Crop Breeding
Program Contact
Ryan Comella
rcomella@foundationfar.org
Partnerships & Development Contact
Lauren Hershey
lhershey@foundationfar.org
This program is no longer accepting applications
Farmers regularly face challenges from insects, disease and climate change. To address these obstacles, our Crops of the Future Collaborative is providing research funding to develop transformative tools and technologies that allow scientists to rapidly introduce new traits into multiple crop species. Such tools and technologies would ultimately increase food security by providing more resilient, diverse and profitable crops for growers.
Introducing a new trait into a crop using traditional breeding methods requires 8-10 years before the enhanced crop reaches farmers. This program is developing methodologies to reduce this timeline by several years, getting improved crops into farmers’ hands sooner.
The Crops of the Future Collaborative aims to fund research on crops species that are well suited for sustainable agriculture, valuable for human nutrition and considered an under-appreciated crop that has not benefited from rapid breeding methods. The funded projects will develop a genotype-independent technology or approach that would be applicable to multiple crop species and foster the adoption of rapid breeding methods in those plants, such as in vitro double haploid production and genome editing.
Year Awarded 2021
FFAR award amount $664,000
Total award amount $739,000
Location College Park, MD
Program Accelerated Crop Breeding
Matching Funders BASF
Grantee Institution University of Maryland
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
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