Cooperative Agreement 5920347001

This $563,886 National Science Foundation (NSF) Biological Sciences (CFDA 47.074) project grant, awarded to Kansas State University in collaboration with USDA Agricultural Research Service and Harvey Mudd College, will develop and optimize a user-friendly digital AC-DC electropenetrograph to enable real-time recording and analysis of tick feeding behaviors. The project aims to overcome limitations of existing analog electropenetrograph technology and spur new research on blood-feeding arthropods...

This federal Project Grant award, totaling $587,749.00, was made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) through the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program. The award will support research by Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (Virginia Tech) with the long-term goal of developing automated pest detection and surveillance capabilities for crops. The project aims to optimize low-cost samplers for...

This Project Grant award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (AFRI Program 10.310) provides $392,000.00 to North Carolina State University to survey stink bugs and beneficial arthropods in North Carolina soybeans over a 3-year period from March 2025 to February 2028. The goal is to generate new baseline data to understand how stink bug species ranges are changing in response to climate change, landscape changes, and agronomic practices in this...

The University of Maryland, College Park will receive $499,961 from the US Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture under the Biotechnology Risk Assessment Research program to conduct genomic monitoring of insect pest populations for emerging resistance to pest management technologies from August 1, 2022 to July 31, 2025. The project aims to assess the strengths and limitations of genomic monitoring approaches for detecting emerging resistance in different pest...

This Project Grant award from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture under the Biotechnology Risk Assessment Research (BRAG) program (CFDA 10.219) provides $649,414 to the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) to develop tools and technologies for monitoring and improving the use of precision-guided sterile insect technique (PGSIT) and other CRISPR-based genetic technologies to control the spotted wing drosophila pest. Key deliverables include: A diagnostic system called...

This $392,000 Project Grant award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program will support research to examine the thermal tolerances, reproductive potential, and endosymbiont diversity of four key soybean stink bug species across a geographic gradient. The research aims to provide data on how these soybean pests may be impacted by increasing average temperatures due to climate...

This $324,262 Project Grant award from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Crop Protection and Pest Management (CPPM) Competitive Grants Program supports the development and validation of a grower-friendly, lure-free "trap cropping" system to monitor and manage key insect pests of apples in the Northeast. The research team has developed a novel approach involving grafting six pest-attractive apple cultivars onto perimeter-row trees to serve as permanent...

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded a $138,168 Cooperative Agreement to Texas A&M Agrilife Research to evaluate the effects of hypoxia, temperature, and dose rate on the efficiency of electron beam (eBeam) irradiation against insect pests. The key research activities include: Evaluating the effect of eBeam on the fruit fly Drosophila suzukii and comparing the results to a recent gamma radiation study. Evaluating the...

The University of Wisconsin System, through its University of Wisconsin - Madison division, was awarded a $299,900 Project Grant from the USDA's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (CFDA 10.310) to develop algorithms and a decision framework for using insect eavesdropping technology to monitor pest damage in major agricultural crops. The key objectives are to: (1) Develop an algorithm that correlates insect eavesdropper sensor signals to pest density, and (2) Create a decision tree...

This Cooperative Agreement award, provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA APHIS) under the Plant and Animal Disease, Pest Control, and Animal Care program (CFDA 10.025), is intended to collect and analyze nationwide data on the recovery of four species of introduced parasitoids used as biological control agents for the invasive Emerald Ash Borer. The $199,270 award to the University of Maryland, College Park will fund the deployment of...