FFAR Awards $1 Million Grant to Create Open Source Technology for Gene Discovery in Plants

The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), a nonprofit established in the 2014 Farm Bill with bipartisan congressional support, awarded a $1 million Seeding Solutions grant to University of California, Davis (UC Davis) to study the genetics of rice plants. Together with researchers at the University of North Carolina and collaborators, the team will develop and implement a chemistry-driven gene discovery approach to identify genes that modulate root traits. 

The FFAR grant has been matched with funding from the UC Davis Innovation Institute for Food and Health, the Structural Genomics Consortium, AgBiome, and Promega for a total $2.3 million investment.

“This project is a prime example of how public-private partnerships can advance our understanding of plant genetics to develop crops resistant to drought and other climate extremes,” said Sally Rockey, executive director of the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research.

For the full release: http://foundationfar.org/2017/11/30/ffar-awards-1-million-grant-create-open-source-technology-gene-discovery-plants/