 UMN Announces Launch of Agricultural Partnership with Brazil
The University of Minnesota (UMN) and Brazil are joining forces to tackle problems of viable productivity growth in agriculture, sustainably. The Labex-Flex-UMN partnership will bring together Brazil and Minnesota to address many shared agricultural problems between both entities, such as pests, disease, soil management, climate, and other weather risk challenges.
“Streamlining research collaboration between agricultural research powerhouses, such as Embrapa, and College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS), accelerates science-based sustainable productivity growth in local and global agriculture,” said Phil Pardey, CFANS applied economics professor and director of the International Science and Technology Practice and Policy (InSTePP) Center. “Both Brazil and Minnesota are important global agricultural regions, and will mutually benefit from strategic collaboration in research and development.”
Labex-Flex-UMN, located on the UMN St. Paul campus, represents the first of a new form of virtual Embrapa laboratories linking Embrapa to a research university. The partnership, including the Supercomputing Institute and the CFANS will use big and small data to identify agricultural problems and work to develop actionable solutions. In addition, it will connect the University of Minnesota to Embrapa, Brazil's equivalent to the USDA, to extend and re-imagine rapidly expanding local, national, and international public-private research partnerships.
Read the press release. (Photo credit: UMN)
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Breakthroughs 2030 Executive Committee
The
National Academies of Sciences (NAS), Engineering, and Medicine has announced the
full Breakthroughs 2030 Executive Committee. NAS sought nominations for
scientific leaders across various disciplines as part of an activity that
will develop a compelling strategy for food and agricultural research for the
next decade and beyond.
The study committee will
offer a strategic and ambitious view of the opportunities for fundamental and
applied interdisciplinary research that is grounded by a deep scientific
understanding of food and agricultural challenges and elevated by the
breakthrough potential of insights and tools from newly-converging disciplines
in the food and agriculture setting.
Study Committee Co-Chairs:
Susan R. Wessler, NAS, University of California-Riverside
John D. Floros, Kansas State University
Members: David B. Allison, University of
Alabama-Birmingham; Corrie Brown, University of Georgia; Lisa Goddard, Columbia University; Mary Lou Guerinot, Dartmouth College; Janet Jansson, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Lee-Ann Jaykus, North Carolina State University; Helen H. Jensen, Iowa State University; Rajiv Khosla, Colorado State University; Robin Lougee, IBM Research, Gregory V. Lowry, Carnegie Mellon University; and Alison L. Van Eenennaam, University of California-Davis.
More information is available on the NAS website.
 Jessica Jarick Metcalfe Named I-TOPP Scholar
Jessica Jarick Metcalfe, Doctoral Research Fellow, University of Illinois-Urbana, was recently named the I-TOPP (Illinois Transdisciplinary Obesity Prevention Program) Scholar for receiving the 2017 Impact Award. She earned the award for her work with Illinois Junior Chefs by Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior Program. This national award is only given to one project per year. Metcalfe also received the 2017 Student Scholarship by Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior Foundation.
I-TOPP, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is an innovative research-based PhD/MPH degree program with a focus on obesity prevention and child health and wellbeing.
Funded by NIFA, I-TOPP also provides opportunities for broad cross-disciplinary interactions between University of Illinois faculty and scholars with international leaders through the Visiting Faculty Program, Lecture Series, and Biennial Symposium.
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NIFA Seeks Research Topics from Commodity Boards for FY 2018 AFRI Program
Solicitation of Commodity Board Topics and Contribution
of Funding under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive
Grants Program was published in the Federal
Register May 26, 2017. Commodity boards must
submit topics that relate to established priority areas of AFRI by 5 p.m.
EDT on July 25 for consideration in the FY 2018 AFRI program.
NIFA is soliciting topics from
eligible commodity board entities (federal and state-level commodity boards),
which they are willing to equally co-fund with NIFA. The topics will be considered for
inclusion in a future Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive
Grants Program.
USDA Invests $17.7 Million in Plant Health and Production Workforce
NIFA announced 54 grants totaling more than $17.7 million for plant research that helps optimize crop production, mitigate disease, and increase yield. The funding is made possible through NIFA’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program, authorized by the 2014 Farm Bill.
Among the FY16 projects awarded, NIFA and a multistate consortium led by the Iowa Corn Promotion Board are co-funding Iowa State University researchers to study the use of soil nitrate sensors and genotyping to improve yield prediction models for next generation breeders. Among other projects, Michigan Technological University researchers will investigate novel timber production systems to protect productivity and sustainability of northern hardwoods in the North Central Region. Rutgers University researchers will target cranberry fruit chemistry to develop cultivars for use in healthier, low-sugar products. More information is available on the NIFA website.
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