NIFA Invests Over $8.65M for Plant Breeding

Apr 30, 2021

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) invested over $8.65 million in 22 plant breeding research projects through its Agriculture and Food Research Initiative program.

The Plant Breeding for Agricultural Production grants(link is external) include a co-funded project by the Kansas Wheat Commission through the Farm Bill commodity boards topic provision, as well as five cultivar development projects aimed at accelerating testing, evaluating and releasing publicly-finished wheat, triticale, sorghum, and canola cultivars for farmers.

“Plant breeding is a critical link in helping agriculture mitigate climate change,” said NIFA director Dr. Carrie Castille. “These innovative projects will advance crop production efficiency, healthfulness, product quality, and the value of U.S. agricultural plants while increasing farmer profitability and sustainability.”

Some research funded from the Plant Breeding for Agricultural Production(link is external) AFRI priority area include: Texas A&M University’s project, “Unoccupied Aerial System Enabled Phenomic Selection to Develop Improved Southern Maize Hybrids,” to evaluate using drones to improve speed and accuracy of decision-making. Michigan State University’s project, “Mining the Wild Species Solanum Microdontum for Improvement of Cultivated Potato,” to enable efficient late blight and heat resistant potato varieties. University of California-Davis’ project, “Plant Breeding Partnerships: Breeding Pepper for Mechanical Harvesting II,” to develop competitive green chile pepper varieties amenable to mechanical harvesting.

NIFA invests in and advances agricultural research, education, and Extension across the nation to make transformative discoveries that solve societal challenges. NIFA supports initiatives that ensure the long-term viability of agriculture and applies an integrated approach to ensure that groundbreaking discoveries in agriculture-related sciences and technologies reach the people who can put them into practice. In FY2020, NIFA’s total investment was $1.95 billion.

Source : usda.gov

Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

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