USDA Awards Research Grant to Virginia Tech to Work on Soybean
April 1, 2011| |
U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) awarded US$9.2 M to Virginia Tech to help improve soybean production. A team from the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute and Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences will identify genes that restrict the potential for pathogens to cause disease.
"Agriculture faces a serious challenge as it strives to produce food for a global population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050," said Roger Beachy, NIFA director. "Today, soybeans are the largest source of protein and the second largest source of vegetable oil in the world, so improving soybean production has important implications for food security. NIFA is working to increase food production while minimizing losses from disease, harvest, transport and storage."
The research activities will focus specifically on oomycete pathogens of soybean including Phytophthora sojae, a plant pathogen that causes root and stem rot in soybean. Technologies to mitigate oomycete diseases of soybean can be applied to other plant species.
View the USDA press release at http://www.nifa.usda.gov/newsroom/news/2011news/03281_vt_soybean.html
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