The US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) will provide over $27.6m in financing to address food security and hunger challenges through improved animal production and health.
The funding to support research, education, and extension projects is being made through NIFA's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), which is authorized by the 2014 Farm Bill.
NIFA director Sonny Ramaswamy said: "These grants allow American agriculture to remain a competitive force by providing food that is not only nutritious, but safe, and abundant."
Food producers are currently looking for feasible solutions to face major challenges in agriculture production, such as the extreme weather events and droughts, diminishing water resources, climate change, pests, and global competition.
A part of the funding will be used by a Michigan state university to create a health-monitoring tool to assess the risk of developing metabolic stress in dairy cattle and an Ohio state university led-consortia to control poultry respiratory diseases in the US, besides several others.
The projects will advance genome enabled precision breeding and enhance animal production by improving animal growth, reproductive efficiency, and animal well-being.
These projects targeting improvements in livestock and aquaculture species will tackle new, foreign or emerging disease threats through vaccine development, prevention, earl
