Funding Opportunities

The AFRI EWD has three overarching goals:

1. Enhancing Agricultural Literacy and Workforce Training offers in-service training in order to provide K-14 educators with increased knowledge of food and agricultural science disciplines and career opportunities and help them develop improved curricula to train the agricultural workforce for the future.
2. Developing Pathways that provide formal and non-formal education experiential learning for students to enter or gain skills applicable to the food and agriculture fields.
3. Advancing Science supports graduate and post-graduate education in agriculture and related disciplines.
   1. Predoctoral Fellowships
   2. Postdoctoral Fellowships

The deadline is dependent on Program Area. Please refer to the current RFA for specific dates.

The AFRI Foundational and Applied Science Program focuses on building a foundation of fundamental and applied knowledge in food and agricultural sciences critical for solving current and future societal challenges. The AFRI FAS Program supports grants in six priority areas:

• Plant health and production and plant products
• Animal health and production of animal products
• Food safety, nutrition, and health
• Bioenergy, natural resources, and environment
• Agriculture systems and technology
• Agriculture economics and rural communities

The deadline is dependent on Program Area. Please refer to the current RFA for specific dates.

The Agriculture and Food Research Initiative’s Sustainable Agricultural Systems (SAS) program area promotes the sustainable supply of abundant, affordable, safe, nutritious, and accessible food and other agricultural products while enhancing economic opportunities and improving the long-term health and well-being of all Americans.

Note: This RFA has two program area priorities, each with different eligibility requirements. A9201 invites only integrated project (must include research, education, and extension) applications with limited eligibility. A9211 invites only research project applications with wide eligibility.

The intent of the Specialty Crop Research Initiative (SCRI) is to promote collaboration, open communication, the exchange of information, and the development of resources that accelerate application of scientific discovery and technology to solving needs of the various specialty crop industries. SCRI will give priority to projects that are multistate, multi-institutional, or trans-disciplinary, and include explicit mechanisms to communicate results to producers and the public. Legislative priorities include:

1. Research in plant breeding, genetics, genomics, and other methods to improve crop characteristics. Projects that seek to create improved cultivars through the use of biotechnology must demonstrate an understanding of the regulatory requirements involved in their release and must also present a plan for addressing the regulatory issues;
2. Efforts to identify and address threats from pests and diseases, including threats to specialty crop pollinators;
3. Efforts to improve production efficiency, handling and processing, productivity, and profitability over the long term (including specialty crop policy and marketing);
4. New innovations and technology, including improved mechanization and technologies that delay or inhibit ripening;
5. Methods to prevent, detect, monitor, control, and respond to potential food safety hazards in the production efficiency, handling and processing of specialty crops, including fresh produce.

Specialty crops include: fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, dried fruits, and horticulture and nursery crops, including floriculture.

How to apply:

The SCRI application review is now a two-stage process. First, NIFA publishes a call for pre-applications, typically in September or October. Applicants submit a Stakeholder Relevance Statement, estimated budget request, letters of support, and other supporting documents. Those packets undergo a review by members of the specialty crop industry. To the degree possible, crop types are grouped and considered by industry representatives familiar with that crop.

The CPS program aims to develop the core research needed to engineer these complex CPS, some of which may also require dependable, high-confidence, or provable behaviors. Core research areas of the program include control, data analytics, and machine learning including real-time learning for control, autonomy, design, Internet of Things (IoT), mixed initiatives including human-in- or human-on-the-loop, networking, privacy, real-time systems, safety, security, and verification. The program additionally supports the development of methods, tools, and hardware and software components based upon these cross-cutting principles, along with validation of the principles via prototypes and testbeds. This program also fosters a research community that is committed to advancing education and outreach in CPS and accelerating the transition of CPS research into the real world.

Applications include the following:

• Agriculture
• Aeronautics
• Building design
• Civil infrastructure
• Energy
• Environmental quality
• Healthcare and personalized medicine
• Manufacturing
• Transportation

Upcoming proposal deadline is June 15, 2023 (FRONTIER proposals) and June 29, 2023 (SMALL and MEDIUM proposals)

Supports research and training on the structure and function of organisms. Core areas supported include development, behavior, neuroscience, physiology, biomechanics and morphology, microbiology, immunology, virology, and plant and animal genomics.

Proposals are accepted anytime

MCB supports research that promises to uncover the fundamental properties of living systems across atomic, molecular, subcellular, and cellular scales. The program gives high priority to projects that advance mechanistic understanding of the structure, function, and evolution of molecular, subcellular, and cellular systems, especially research that aims at quantitative and predictive knowledge of complex behavior and emergent properties. MCB encourages research exploring new concepts in molecular and cellular biology, while incorporating insights and approaches from other scientific disciplines, such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, mathematics, and physics, to illuminate principles that govern life at the molecular and cellular level. MCB also encourages research that exploits experimental and theoretical approaches and utilizes a diverse spectrum of model and non-model animals, plants, and microbes across the tree of life. Proposals that pursue potentially transformative ideas are welcome, even if these entail higher risk.

Research areas supported include:

1. structure, dynamics, and function of biomolecules and supramolecular assemblies, especially under physiological conditions
2. organization, processing, expression, regulation, and evolution of genetic and epigenetic information
3. cellular structure, properties, and function across broad spatiotemporal scales
4. systems and/or synthetic biology to study complex interactions through modeling or manipulation or design of living systems at the molecular-to-cellular scale

Full proposals accepted at anytime.

Supports highly interdisciplinary, fundamental research that will enable the design of new materials, processes, and systems to address environmental engineering and sustainability problems. While this solicitation is not restricted to a specific environmental engineering and sustainability research topic, the current solicitation emphasizes research topics related to curtailing climate change and mitigating the environmental impacts of climate change.

Teams should be constructed such that expertise is both complementary and distinct, drawing inspiration from the CBET-supported research communities (see programmatic clusters in webpage annoucement). At least three named investigators must be identified, each of whom must possess a unique perspective or skillset that motivates the proposed approach(es).

Annual proposal deadline due date is January 31st

DEB encourages research that elucidates fundamental principles that identify and explain the unity and diversity of life and its interactions with the environment over space and time. Research may incorporate field, laboratory, or collection-based approaches; observational or manipulative studies; synthesis activities; phylogenetic discovery projects; or theoretical approaches involving analytical, statistical, or computational modeling.

Full proposals accepted anytime.

FARR funds food and agriculture science that addresses large-scale challenges to develop actionable knowledge and solutions. We fund research focusing on their cross-cutting Challenge Areas.

Submission window is open year-round. Please check their open opportunities before applying.

The Rapid Outcomes from Agricultural Research (ROAR) program deploys urgent funding to support research and outreach in response to emerging or unanticipated threats to the nation’s food supply or agricultural systems.

Plant and animal pests and pathogens can strike quickly, devastating crops, livestock and livelihoods. When such unplanned events occur, it often takes months before an effective response can be mounted. Researchers must understand these pests and pathogens before they can develop an effective solution. While the initial period after pest or pathogen detection is critical to stopping the threat, conventional research funding opportunities take significant time and effort to pursue.

To address these outbreaks quickly, FFAR makes rapid grants through ROAR for research related to response, prevention or mitigation of new pests and pathogens. ROAR’s one-year funding fills urgent research gaps until traditional, longer-term funding can be secured.

Submission is open year-round.