Refine Results
Priority Areas
Consortia
Program
Country
Location
Year

196 found

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.

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.

Seeding a Resilient Wheat Microbiome

Portrait of Lindsey Becker.

Lindsey Becker

2018-2021 FFAR Fellow

Systems Thinking for Sustainable Manure Management

Portrait of Allison Deviney.

Alison Deviney

2018-2021 FFAR Fellow

Fine-tuning photosynthesis

Portrait of Dhruv Patel smiling.

Dhruv Patel

2019-2022 FFAR Fellow

FFAR and AAMVC Seek Nominations for Veterinary Fellowship