The Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) Foundational and Applied Science Program Request for Applications (RFA) released recently includes a new cross-cutting program that could be of interest to the IPM community. This program, “Tactical Sciences for Agricultural Biosecurity (Program code: A1181)” focuses on increasing our national capacity to prevent, rapidly detect, and respond to biological threats to the U.S. agriculture and food supply.
Applications to this program must address one or more of the following:
• Detection and diagnostics of transboundary and emerging pests and diseases associated
with animal production systems and/or emerging, re-emerging and invasive diseases, insects and weeds associated with plant production systems. Non-traditional detection methodologies such as syndromic surveillance, predictive analysis of satellite imagery, etc. will also be considered; or
- Rapid response to, and recovery from, pests and diseases that pose large-scale biosecurity threats to plant and animal production, including existing and imminent threats to U.S. agricultural production systems.
Further details are available in the RFA https://nifa.usda.gov/sites/default/files/rfa/20190507-fy2019-afri-foundational-and-applied-science-rfa.pdf
The program requires a Letter of Intent that has to be submitted by July 9, 2019 (5:00 p.m. Eastern Time). A webinar to discuss this program will be held shortly.
Other AFRI RFAs that are currently open include:
The AFRI-Education and Workforce Development RFA with information regarding the Research and Extension Experience for Undergraduates (REEU) and the Pre and Postdoctoral Fellowship programs.
https://nifa.usda.gov/sites/default/files/rfa/fy-2019-and-fy-2020-afri-education-workforce-and-development-rfa.pdf
The AFRI-Sustainable Agricultural Systems which funds large transdisciplinary projects to solve key problems of local, regional, national, and global importance in sustaining conventional, organic, and urban agricultural systems. https://nifa.usda.gov/sites/default/files/rfa/FY19-AFRI-SAS.pdf