Cooperative Agreement F21AC03153

This USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Integrated Programs (CFDA 10.303) Project Grant award of $606,818 to Washington State University aims to explore the potential of the plant Solanum sisymbriifolium as a sustainable biopesticide to control root-knot and cyst nematodes in high-value specialty crops such as potato, carrot, onion, wine grapes, and tree fruits. The key objectives are to: Determine the efficacy of S. sisymbriifolium formulations against root-knot and cyst...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Integrative Activities awarded a $220,890 Project Grant to Mississippi Valley State University to investigate the effects of Nicandra physalodes, a plant containing alkaloids, on the growth and development of noxious weeds, including Pennisetum clandestinum (Kikuyu grass), Echinochloa crus-galli (Barnyard grass), and Lolium multiflorum (Italian ryegrass). The research aims to explore an environmentally friendly, cost-effective integrated weed...

The University of California, Davis (UC Davis) was awarded a $650,000 Project Grant under the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program to elucidate the biosynthesis and ecological importance of anti-herbivory acylhexoses in the Solanaceae plant family. The research will combine plant biochemistry, analytical chemistry, plant transformation, and plant-insect interaction studies to provide a fundamental understanding of the molecular...

This Project Grant award of $884,994.00 from the National Science Foundation's Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) supports research to examine the genetic changes and environmental factors responsible for natural variation in fruit color across the plant genus Solanum, which includes economically important crops like tomato, eggplant, and potato. The research integrates comparative genomic, transcriptomic, and macroecological data to investigate molecular variation in carotenoid and...

The University of Nevada, Reno will use $800,000 in funding from the US Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) federal grant program to identify which gene at the Inhibition of Alien Pollen locus controls the ability of alien pollen tubes to reach the ovary during interspecific cross-pollination in sorghum. The researchers will characterize plant morphology, reproductive biology, off-target copy number, and...

This federal Project Grant award, funded by the National Science Foundation's Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074), supports research to investigate the relationship between the repeated evolutionary origins of inflated calyxes (the outer organ of the flower) and the production of insecticidal acylsugars in the tomatillo plant tribe (Physalideae). The $228,454 award, made on June 1, 2025, with an ultimate completion date of May 31, 2028, will build the first comprehensive phylogenetic...

This Cooperative Agreement award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) under the Plant and Animal Disease, Pest Control, and Animal Care program (CFDA 10.025) provides $678,000 to the Regents of the University of Idaho to conduct research to identify and isolate the genetic defenses from the plant Solanum sisymbriifolium (Litchi tomato-LT) that make it immune to potato cyst nematodes (PCN). The intended goals are to transfer these genetic...

This $5,953,802 Project Grant award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Specialty Crop Research Initiative (SCRI) program funds a multi-institutional effort led by New Mexico State University to develop an integrated, system-based approach to significantly reduce the risk of Phytophthora blight in vegetable crops like peppers and cucurbits. The project aims to: 1) evaluate genetic diversity of the causal agent Phytophthora capsici, 2) identify resistant crop genotypes tolerant to...

This $506,900 project grant from the National Science Foundation's Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) supports research at the University of California, Davis to understand the molecular mechanisms of plant immune response to herbivore-associated peptide elicitors. The three-year award beginning June 1, 2022 will leverage a newly discovered pattern recognition receptor in common beans, INR, to quantify its contribution to overall herbivore defense against caterpillars. Researchers will...

This Project Grant, awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program (CFDA 10.310), will support research aimed at understanding plant immune recognition and response to the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae. The $958,480 award to the University of California, Berkeley, will fund a 3-year project to investigate how wild tomato plants recognize the pathogen's needle-like syringe, which is used to inject effector proteins that...