Cooperative Agreement DEAR0001963

This federal Cooperative Agreement award from the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), under the CFDA program 81.135 Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy, provides $1,722,000 in funding to Verinomics, Inc. and its subcontractor MetalPlant. The purpose of the project is to turn two foreign plant species into suitable candidates for phytomining nickel resources in the United States. This will involve deploying new technologies like gene editing to improve the plants' yield and prevent them from releasing seeds that could damage native ecosystems. The project aims to lay the groundwork for further innovation by essentially domesticating these plant species from wild ones into crop plants. This work is expected to help address the potential national security issue of securing and stimulating domestic nickel production, which is increasingly important as the U.S. relies more on electric vehicles and renewable energy.