Plant Breeding, Genetics & Genomics Programs

With the world's population estimated to reach 9.6 billion by 2050, more food — and more nutritious food — will be needed, making crop plants even more important to feed a hungry world. NIFA provides national leadership and funding opportunities to conduct basic, applied, and integrated research in several areas of plant breeding, genetics and genomics. Our partners include scientists in universities and research organizations, crop food industries, and, of course, consumers.

This portfolio of funded projects is responsive to stakeholder critical needs for increased productivity by providing agricultural plants with higher inherent genetic potential. To fulfill this mission requires continuous genetic improvement through more efficient and effective breeding, which exploits new sources of genes and traits, innovative breeding methods, data-mining, bioinformatics tools, and knowledge of molecular and biological processes. The ultimate goals of these efforts are to improve the production efficiency, yield, sustainability, resilience, healthfulness, product quality, and value of U.S. agricultural plants.

Funded Projects

• FY 2018 NIFA NSF BBSRC Breakthrough Technology EAGERs
• FY 2013-2018 Plant Breeding for Agricultural Production (A1141) Projects
• FY 2016 AFRI Food Security - Breeding and Phenomics of Crops and Livestock Projects
• FY 2016 NIFA International Wheat Yield Partnership
• FY 2016 NIFA NSF EAGERs
• FY 2015 AFRI Food Security - Breeding and Genomics of Crops and Livestock Projects
• FY 2015-2018 Specialty Crop Research Initiative (SCRI)
• FY 2015-2018 Organic Research and Extension Initiative (OREI)

• USDA Awards More Than $14.5 Million to Support Plant Health and Resilience Research
• USDA Awards $3.4 Million for Research to Increase Wheat Yields
• USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture Announces $3 Million for Plant and Animal Phenomics and Microbiome Projects

• The National Plant Breeding Study
• NIFA Funding Accelerates Wheat & Barley Plant Breeding (Infographic)

• National Plant Genome Initiative Five-Year Plan: 2014-2018 (16.09 KB)
• Plant Breeding Roadmap (1.16 MB)
• A report of the Phenomics workshop sponsored by NIFA and NSF (826.91 KB)
• Using Crop Genetic Resources to Help Agriculture Adapt to Climate Change Economics and Policy (2.56 MB)
• Advances in Field-Based High-throughput Phenotyping and Data Management.pdf (405.52 KB)
• National Plant Genetic Resources Training Program (199.35 KB)
• 2018 NIFA FACT Workshop - High Throughput, Field-Based Phenotyping Technologies for the Genomes to Fields (G2F) Initiative (82.17 KB)

• Wheat Coordinated Agricultural Project
• International Wheat Yield Partnership
• Loblolly Pine Genome Sequencing Project
• National Association of Plant Breeders (NAPB)
• Potato Breeding Program Projects
• Canola Breeding Program Projects
• American Association for the Advancement of Science
• American Society for Horticultural Science
• American Society of Plant Biologists
• Genetics Society of America
• Solanaceae Coordinated Agricultural Project
• RosBREED
• Bean Coordinated Agricultural Project
• National Plant Germplasm Coordinating Committee
• Multistate Projects - National Information Management and Support System
• Intellectual Property Rights and Public Plant Breeding
• Archived Information on Plant Breeding, Genetics & Genomics Programs
• Plant Genebank Training Workshop

Related Information