BIOAg Funding Awards Announced

red raspberries
Meijun Zhu et al. are investigating how manure-derived fertilizers impact the bacterial community and antibiotic resistance genes in Washington red raspberry fields. Photo: T. Zimmerman

The BIOAg Grant Program is one critical way that the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources carries out its mission improve the environment, increase farm profitability, and improve the human sustainability of agriculture and the food system. We use this program to incubate research and educational activities at WSU that advance the sustainability of agriculture in the state – enabling WSU faculty and partners to leverage significant additional external support to advance these goals. In addition, the Program has supported a number of graduate students who have and will pursue careers in academia, industry and community leadership with a focus on agricultural sustainability.

I am very pleased to be able to share with you the projects selected for funding this year. Projects include research, extension, and curriculum development at the new Everett campus. They also range from basic laboratory science to applied projects, from developing new methods to quantify the weed seedbank, to evaluating and documenting the impacts of 14 years of Farmwalks. The diversity and creativity of the funded projects is a reflection on the incredible diversity and creativity that we see on a daily basis in Washington’s food and agriculture community.

The investigators and project titles for all of this year’s selections are listed below. Follow the links to learn more about each project. You can also visit our grants database to learn about the results from past BIOAg projects.