WASHINGTON, D.C. — The USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) finalized grants for the Specialty Crop Research Initiative (SCRI) during the Specialty Crop Committee meeting on Oct.1-2.

The 2014 grant cycle was the first time the SCRI included a relevancy review judged by industry representatives, as well as a Scientific Merit Review. Tom Bewick, national program leader for NIFA, said the two-pronged judging was useful but implementation was hampered in 2014 by a short time frame.

"The main criteria for funding is ranking," he said. "In general, the applications that rated highly in relevancy ranked highly in the scientific review."

SCRI received 83 re-applications and reviewed full applications for 75 programs. Bewick said the number of total applications is usually closer to 200. To help increase the number of applications in 2015, he plans to give more time to return the information as well as detailed timelines.

A webinar format for training, allowing conversation between organizers and participants, seemed to work better than the written instructions provided previously, he said. With the low number of admissions, all of the higher-ranked projects received grants.

A reoccurring problem, Bewick said, is having industry representatives with strong science backgrounds to assist the scientific relevancy review. Each proposal must have at least three reviewers, one of which NIFA tries to make industry-specific. The problem is reviewing full proposals can take significant time, as some will be 500 pages long.

He agreed there may be a way to limit the size of submissions by limiting page numbers for certain criteria, but some aspects, such as the résumés for all who will participate in the research program, will not be controllable.

Deadlines for fiscal year 2014 occurred in April and June. The spring deadlines may have contributed to the decreased number of applications received, Bewick said, but there is always something happening in farming to interfere with deadlines.

The SCRI is open to individuals or organizations with ideas focused on five areas: plant breeding, genetics, genomics; identify and address threats from pests and diseases; improve production efficiency, productivity and overall profitability; new innovations and technology; and methods to prevent, detect and monitor potential food safety hazards.

The grants awarded for FY 2014 include, among others: Michigan State University in Lansing ($3,477,705, $2,450,060, $1,802,113), and University of Tennessee in Knoxville ($1,912,178).