This Project Grant award, provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) CFDA 10.310, supports a research project to investigate the effects of climate warming on a suite of crop-associated arthropod species. The $120,000 award, with a performance period from August 2024 to August 2026, will enable the University of California, Davis to leverage a novel ecoinformatics approach...
This Project Grant award from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (CFDA 10.310) provides $682,500 to Texas A&M AgriLife Research to identify bacterial effectors from plant pathogens transmitted by psyllid insects, and evaluate their role in infecting plants and arthropod vectors. The goal is to develop new control strategies that disrupt pathogen transmission and plant infection. This original research will study the parallel...
This federal Project Grant award from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) (CFDA 10.310) provides $735,923 to the Regents of the University of California at Riverside to study the transmission dynamics of the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa. The goal is to identify components of the pathogen-insect-plant interface that could be disrupted to control diseases caused by X. fastidiosa, such as olive quick decline and citrus...
This $639,875 Project Grant from the United States Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program (CFDA 10.310) will fund research at Texas A&M Agrilife Research to improve understanding of plant-microbe-insect interactions and their implications for sustainable pest management. Specifically, the grant will support identification of plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) combinations that induce...
Emory University will research the interactions between squash bugs and their bacterial symbionts under a $222,000 Project Grant from the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Through the grant period of September 1, 2023 to August 31, 2025, Emory University researchers will investigate how squash bugs acquire bacterial symbionts during development and establish digestive tract crypts to house these bacteria. They will study the genetic mechanisms by...
The University of Arizona received a three-year, $646,180 project grant award from the United States Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative competitive grants program. The grant funds research into the environmental transmission of symbiotic bacteria in Leptoglossus zonatus, an orchard pest bug. The University will study the rates and risks of environmental symbiont acquisition in confined bug populations, examine...
This $514,102 Project Grant from the US Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program (CFDA 10.310) will fund research at Texas Tech University investigating an alternative non-toxic solution for controlling plant-parasitic nematodes. The project focuses on naturally occurring bacteria found within nematodes that may drive their survival and impact on plants. It aims to generate the first coherent picture...
This $2,500,000 Project Grant was awarded by the Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (CFDA 10.310) program. The grant will fund research to examine the role of invasive plants as conduits for pathogen transmission across ecosystem boundaries, with a focus on understanding the eco-evolutionary dynamics of disease emergence in agricultural and natural systems. The research team, led by the University of...
This $797,594 project grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) supports research to develop crop varieties with stable disease resistance and tolerance to changing growing temperatures. The project, led by a team of scientists from the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany, will utilize field and growth chamber experiments to investigate how plant resistance genes and pathogen populations respond to temperature variations. The goal...
This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) supports research examining how climate change impacts microbial symbionts and their interactions with terrestrial organisms, particularly aphids. The $589,012 grant awarded to Drexel University on August 15, 2023 will fund a collaborative research project studying the mechanisms by which temperature changes disrupt protective symbiont relationships, and conversely, how symbionts may...