June 5, 2024 – NIFA [the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture] has announced more than $5.7 million in funding for 10 projects as part of the Pollinator Health: Research and Application program. The program supports projects focused on promoting healthy populations of pollinators in agricultural systems where reliance on pollinators for pollination services is increasing and where declines of pollinators are evident. These grants are part of NIFA’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI A1311).
List of Awardees:
- Agricultural Research Service, $749,891.00 — “No more mummies: Novel and integrative treatment options for Ascosphaera apis [chalkbrood] in honey bees”
- Colorado State University, $742,173 — “Competition between managed honeybees and wild bees in the Colorado Front Range”
- Trustees of Indiana University, $749,651.00 — “The interplay between queenliness, the honey bee microbiome, and colony health”
- Mississippi State University, $749,720.00 — “From genes to queens: A systematic approach to improve bee resistance to viral infection”
- University of California Irvine, $300,000.00 — “Identification and cultivation of probiotic bacteria that improve the health and performance of managed bumble bees”
- University of Georgia Research Foundation, $300,000.00 — “Mounting an ecologically-informed response to Vespa velutina [yellow-legged hornet], a novel invasive threat to beekeeping and pollinators in the United States”
- University of Southern Mississippi, $299, 999.00 — “Reference atlas of Apis mellifera hemocyte transcriptomes”
- University of Texas at Austin, $750,000.00 — “Protection of honey bees through paratransgenic peptide secretion”
- University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, $299,482.00 — Initial characterization of floral resources used by pollinators in Tamaulipan thornscrub to inform habitat restoration”
- Villanova University, $749,086.00 — Monitoring Bombus, floral abundance and diversity using computer vision and autonomous aerial vehicles
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) was established by the Food Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 (the 2008 Farm Bill) to find innovative solutions to issues related to agriculture, food, the environment, and communities. More information is available at Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) | NIFA (usda.gov).
