AMES, Iowa – Iowa State University researchers received a new federal grant to further expand the Agricultural Genome to Phenome Initiative, which is now entering Phase II of Iowa State’s agricultural genetics research.

The goal of the Agricultural Genome to Phenome Initiative is to explore how an organism’s genome (complete set of DNA), influences expression of observable, phenotypic traits (phenomes) – and often how these traits are influenced by environmental factors.

Phenotypic traits relate to the observable characteristics of an individual resulting from the interaction of its genotype (the investigation of an individual organism) with the environment.

“The new grant is not for internal research,” said Patrick S. Schnable, project director for the transdisciplinary, multi-institutional grant.

“Instead, this renewal will enable us to fund two more rounds of competitive ‘seed’ grants, allowing us to further engage the more than 1,000 initiative participants from across the U.S.,” he added.

The $960,000 award from the USDA’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture supports phase II of this three-year Iowa State University-led  agricultural genetics effort. The program initially won a grant for National Institute for Food and Agriculture funding of $960,000 last September.   

Under the 2018 Farm Bill, the USDA’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture can establish a new competitive grant program to support collaborative research concerning genomes and phenomes of both crops and animals of importance to the agriculture sector of the United States. Congress appropriated $1 million in fiscal year 2020 for this effort.

In its first year, the Agricultural Genome to Phenome Initiative awarded seed grants for seven projects, representing 15 institutions that included undergraduate and historically African American universities and colleges, land grant universities and the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service.

The projects covered topics including educational resources and gaps in agricultural genomics-to-phenomics data science across plant and animal agriculture genomics; optimizing three-dimensional (plant) canopy architecture for better crops; and ethics, and diversity.

“This effort is a big tent, bringing researchers together from areas of expertise that are not always recognized as part of agriculture,” said Jennifer L. Clarke, director of the Quantitative Life Science Initiative at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and lead researcher directing the project seed grants.

She said the seed grants are one way to encourage broad involvement, and enable this expanding scientific community.

“Our next phase for the seed grants will provide support for emerging ideas, early development of promising projects and established projects that can help sustain Agricultural Genome to Phenome Initiative cross-(plant) kingdom work,” she said.

“We plan to streamline the application process and emphasize early career investigators to encourage the leaders of the future,” she added. “We will also look for proposals that address USDA priorities like mitigating environmental impacts of agriculture.”

In addition to the seed grants, virtual field days, training sessions, workshops, a conference and a community survey have been conducted, and more events are being planned.

In addition, a stakeholders committee that involves nearly 20 industry organizations is being chaired by Iowa State alumnus David Ertl (’82 M.S., ’84 Ph.D. plant breeding), technology commercialization manager for the Iowa Corn Growers Assoc.

Ertl said receiving the second-round award from the USDA this early in the project can be credited to the USDA’s commitment to the initiative and the teams’ rapid progress as well as demonstrated interest from strong institutional partners.

“This exciting effort to connect crop, livestock and data experts has many implications for accelerating crop and livestock improvement and enhancing agricultural resiliency,” he said. “This becomes ever-more important as weather variability continues to affect farming operations.”

Dekkers said two more requests for proposals are planned: the first this fall, and another next spring.

“Iowa State has enormous strengths in both the animal and plant sciences, and many of us are willing and interested in learning from each other and finding opportunities for (mutual cooperation),” he said. “I believe that is the reason the USDA chose Iowa State to take the lead on this.

“We will also have the benefit of other institutional partners who bring important, relevant expertise to the project,” he added.