The Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture awarded Purdue University $650,000 under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative competitive grants program to conduct research from June 2023 to May 2027 related to beef cattle production efficiency and health. Specifically, the university will analyze changes in the ruminal, intestinal, and cecal microbiome of grain-finished cattle administered tylosin and monensin antibiotics to characterize...
The Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture awarded $650,000 under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative competitive grants program (AFRI, CFDA No. 10.310) to North Dakota State University for a project titled "Diverse and Dynamic Microbial Communities in Cattle." The four-year project, running from June 2022 to May 2026, will evaluate the impact of altering maternal microbiota in beef cattle via high forage or high concentrate diets on offspring...
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) awarded a $225,000 Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) project grant to the Division of Agriculture of the University of Arkansas. The grant will fund a 2-year research project to characterize the probiotic capabilities of commensal Corynebacterium bacteria isolated from the bovine respiratory microbiota. The goal is to evaluate the potential of these bacterial isolates to inhibit the growth...
The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) received a three-year, $649,000 project grant from the United States Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) federal grant program. The grant will fund research to determine if supplementing dairy calves' diets with Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, a beneficial gut bacterium, can alter their immune response, reduce stress, and influence long-term...
The Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture awarded a $650,000 Project Grant to the Agricultural Research Service to fund research under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative competitive grants program. The grant will support research from June 2023 to May 2027 focusing on the liver and blood microbiome changes and their relationship to ruminal acidosis in dairy cattle. The research aims to investigate membership and longitudinal shifts in the liver and...
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture awarded a $169,028 Project Grant to Hoofprint Biome, Inc. under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program (CFDA 10.212). The funding supports the development of a scalable probiotic solution to reduce methane emissions from cattle. Hoofprint Biome is innovating a library of natural, bioactive peptides that inhibit methane production by microbes in the cattle rumen. The goal is to engineer the secretion of...
This federal Project Grant award of $237,204.00 from the USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program (CFDA 10.310), will fund research into using gut microbiome modulation as an alternative approach to control Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus (PRRSV) in swine. The key objectives of this 18-month project, led by the Regents of the University of Minnesota, are to investigate the effects of microbiome...
This five-year, $650,000 project grant from the US Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture aims to identify cattle that are more efficient forage utilizers under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative competitive grants program. Oklahoma State University will determine the most effective production stage to identify animals efficient at utilizing forage, including the replacement heifer period after weaning, during pregnancy at four years old, and after calving...
This $300,000 federal Project Grant award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program is funding research at the University of Illinois to develop next-generation phenotyping methods for assessing feed and water efficiency in cattle. The project aims to demonstrate that image-based biometric body traits can accurately predict feed and water efficiency, and integrate these novel traits into genetic selection programs to enable more...
This SBIR Phase I award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) program provides $273,111 to Hoofprint Biome, Inc. to develop a probiotic yeast technology that can reduce methane emissions from cattle by at least 30%, and potentially up to 98%. The technology involves screening and optimizing enzymes that restrict methane production in the cattle rumen, and then packaging these enzymes for delivery via a probiotic yeast. The...