New Experimental Field Site? Maybe….

Just finished a lengthy grant proposal effort. For those of you who don’t know it can be an arduous process; coming up with new ideas, thoroughly researching them, writing the 15 pages of the proposal, getting all the collaborators to agree on it, and making sure you have the other 15 pages of junk that is required all formated correctly. Always difficult at best, painful at worst. At the end you are never quite sure whether to declare victory or accept defeat. Then it disappears for 9 months, and just when you have forgot about it, it either reemerges as a project that you have to figure out how to really accomplish, or it collects dust until the next RFP deadline. I’m happy to say, I am now in the waiting phase.

Anyway, this is one of the sites we chose to propose to do work in, when I hiked up last week to check out this place on a ridgetop about 2 miles from my office. Definitely would be great to get the opportunity to visit this place more often! Here is a link to the Project Summary for those that are curious. Thanks to Aimee Classen, Greg Hurst, and Emily Austin for all there help in putting this together!

USDA-DOE Funding Opportunity in Plant Feedstock Genomics for Bioenergy

Woohoo!!! Beneficial Plant Microbe interactions are specifically called out as eligible this year!

Excerpted RFP text below:
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), hereby announce their interest in receiving applications for genomics based research that will lead to the improved use of biomass and plant feedstocks for the production of fuels such as ethanol or renewable chemical feedstocks. Specifically, applications are sought for fundamental research on plants that will improve biomass characteristics, biomass yield, or sustainability. Systems biology approaches to identify genetic indicators enabling plants to be efficiently bred or manipulated, or research to predict phenotype from underlying genotype that could lead to improved feedstock characterization and sustainability are also encouraged.

Link to full announcement in PDF format