Forty grants totaling more than USD 15.7 million (EUR 13.2 million) for agricultural research on the production of beef, dairy, poultry, pork and fish that people consume every day, have been announced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).
“To ensure a healthy and safe food supply, we need innovations,” said NIFA Director Sonny Ramaswamy. “NIFA investments help foster the discovery and translation of new knowledge into science-based management practices to help America’s agricultural enterprises thrive and meet growing consumer demand.”
According to NIFA, the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) is America’s flagship competitive grants program for foundational and translational research, education, and extension projects in the food and agricultural sciences.
The AFRI Foundational program supports research in several priority areas, including animal breeding, reproduction, nutrition and growth. These grants help improve the quality and efficiency of animal production in a variety of ways, such as through the creation of genetic databases, enhanced breeding methods and research on the cellular, molecular, genetic or whole-animal aspects of reproduction, nutrition, growth and lactation.
Past grants include a University of Maine project, which is aimed at helping bolster the New England salmon farming industry, which has declined substantially since 2000, primarily due to a 35 percent decrease in fertilized egg survival. The research is documenting reproductive hormone patterns of North American Atlantic salmon and collecting tissue samples for future studies on embryo mortality.
