ASPB Receives Response to Letter Regarding NIFA’s First RFA Under AFRI

ASPB president Tuan-hua David Ho recently wrote to Roger Beachy, director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), expressing both the Society’s overall support for NIFA’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) and the concerns of ASPB members with some aspects of AFRI’s fiscal year (FY) 2010 Requests for Applications (RFAs).  In particular, Dr. Ho’s letter mentioned the small amount of funding for foundational research, the narrow focus of the six priority areas within the AFRI RFAs, and the availability of AFRI program staff to manage Coordinated Agricultural Projects (CAP), which may be quite large and involve many collaborators.

Dr. Beachy has offered a response to ASPB’s letter that thanks the Society for its thoughtful comments and underscores NIFA’s intention to increase support for discipline-based research through its Foundational Programs from 25% of AFRI funding to 30%; moreover, the amount of available funding would increase proportionately with the growth of the AFRI budget as a whole.  He also mentioned that NIFA will explore ways to modify the Foundational Programs to “allow submission of more innovative investigator initiated work whose outcome may serve the future of U.S. agriculture” and will identify and develop best practices for management of the CAP grants.

The FY 2011 AFRI RFAs are expected to be released before the end of calendar year 2010.

• ASPB president's letter to Dr. Beachy
• Response from Dr. Beachy