This $650,000 Project Grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will fund research under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative competitive grants program. The awardee, the Agricultural Research Service located in Fort Collins, Colorado, will develop techniques using strategically-coated magnetic nano-particles to remove defective spermatozoa from bull semen. Field studies will then evaluate the reproductive potential of the...
This $500,000 project grant from the Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program will develop new selection tools to improve male fertility in beef cattle. Awarded to Kansas State University on May 1, 2021 for a five-year period concluding on April 30, 2026, the grant will result in prototype tools utilizing conception data, semen quality metrics, and breeding soundness examination results on beef bulls....
This $180,000 Project Grant awarded by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) CFDA 10.310 program supports research to understand how semen processing affects sperm characteristics and early embryo development in dairy cattle. The research aims to improve fertility rates when using sexed semen, which currently produces embryos with delayed development and lower transferability compared to conventional semen. The 3-year...
The University of Missouri System was awarded $500,000 under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) competitive grants program administered by the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The project grant funding will support research and development of semen extenders to improve artificial insemination efficiency and pregnancy rates in swine and dairy cattle industries. Specifically, the university researchers will develop techniques to...
The Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture awarded $650,000 under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative competitive grants program to the University of Nebraska from May 2023 through April 2026. The project aims to address heat stress impacts on swine production through three objectives: determining effects on boar reproductive endocrinology, assessing impacts to sperm production, health and fertility; and investigating impairments to cellular and molecular...
The Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) awarded a $647,341 Project Grant to Washington State University under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) competitive grants program. The grant will fund development of a novel cattle breeding tool known as surrogate sires from May 1, 2023 to April 30, 2026. Through the use of genome editing and stem cell transplantation techniques, the project aims to generate bulls lacking the ability to produce...
The University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) was awarded a $1,750,000 Project Grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program. The grant, awarded on September 1, 2023, with a completion date of August 31, 2027, will support research to understand the metabolic pathways and mitochondrial dynamics activated during ovulation and luteinization in beef cattle. The goals of the...
The University of Wisconsin-Madison will receive $650,000 from the United States Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) competitive grants program to study the effects of paternal diet on early embryonic development and fertility across generations in livestock over a four-year period from May 1, 2023 to April 30, 2027. Specifically, the project will evaluate how supplementing rams' diets with methionine...
The federal Project Grant award of $650,000.00 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program supports research by Colorado State University to improve fertility and reproductive efficiency in the beef and dairy cattle industries. The project aims to activate the Nrf2 signaling pathway in bovine preimplantation embryos to mitigate oxidative stress and enhance embryo survival under suboptimal conditions,...
The University of Nebraska was awarded a $650,000 Project Grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) CFDA 10.310 program. The grant, awarded on July 1, 2024, will fund research to develop a better understanding of how excess androgen in the ovarian microenvironment of cattle can impair follicle development and ovulation, which is a major cause of infertility in cattle. The research aims to identify critical...