Project Grant 102192003Q46416

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 federal Project Grant award from the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture, under the Biotechnology Risk Assessment Research (BRAG) Grants Program (CFDA 10.219), provides $650,000 to North Carolina State University (NC State) to develop and evaluate homing gene drive systems targeting three insect pests: spotted wing drosophila, sweetpotato pest drosophila, and the new world screwworm. The goal is to create dominant female-sterile gene...

This Project Grant award from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program provides $750,000 to the Regents of the University of California at Riverside to develop novel insecticidal proteins derived from insect-parasitic nematodes. The goal is to characterize these toxins and assess their efficacy in controlling insect pests in agricultural systems, either through transgenic crops or foliar application. This...

This $189,313.00 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) aims to improve control of the Mexican fruit fly (Mexfly) through the development of genetically modified sterile flies. The key objectives are to double sterile fly production while reducing costs and safety hazards associated with traditional irradiation methods. The...

This $650,000 Project Grant, awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA) under the Biotechnology Risk Assessment Research (BRAG) Program (CFDA 10.219), supports the development of tools and frameworks to assist in the threat assessment of genetically engineered microorganisms (GEMs) for agricultural applications. The key objectives of the "STRATAGEM" project are to develop a standardized suite of DNA watermarking and laboratory...

This $649,847 Project Grant was awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA NIFA) under the Biotechnology Risk Assessment Research Grants Program (CFDA 10.219). The grant funds research to understand how pests overcome plant resistance traits conferred by engineered genes, and develop a monitoring framework to improve the durability of transgenic crops. The research focuses on characterizing the role of gene copy number variants (CNVs) in...

The Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture awarded a $180,000 Project Grant to Regents Of The University Of Minnesota under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program. The University will conduct research on Wolbachia bacteria and its potential to manage arthropod pests as biological control agents. Using functional genomics, proteomics, and synthetic biology methods, the University will characterize Wolbachia proteins that may alter insect...

The Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture awarded a $494,581 Project Grant under the Biotechnology Risk Assessment Research program to Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University. The three-year award beginning September 1, 2022 will support research investigating the environmental persistence and target specificity of minicells-encapsulated RNAi biofungicides. The Biotechnology Risk Assessment Research program aims to generate information assisting...

This Cooperative Agreement, awarded by the Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, is funded at $171,697.00 from September 15, 2023 to September 14, 2024. It is supported under the federal Plant and Animal Disease, Pest Control, and Animal Care grant program (CFDA 10.025), which aims to protect U.S. agriculture from economically damaging plant and animal diseases and pests. The purpose of this project is to evaluate the use of radiation-excitable nanoparticles...

This $650,000 Project Grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA NIFA) under the Biotechnology Risk Assessment Research Grants Program (CFDA 10.219) will fund research at Clemson University to investigate the unintended effects of commonly used site-specific recombinase genes (Cre, Flp, PhiC31) when expressed in creeping bentgrass and Arabidopsis plants. The primary objectives are to examine whether and how the recombinases may cause...