Plant Biotic Interactions
The Plant Biotic Interactions grant program supports research on beneficial and harmful interactions between plants and various organisms to advance agricultural practices.
Funder: U.S. National Science Foundation
Due Dates: October 5, 2076 (Application deadline) | Rolling (Full proposals accepted anytime)
Funding Amounts: Typically $50,000–$300,000 per year for two to four years; estimated program funding of $18,500,000
Summary: Joint NSF/USDA-NIFA funding for fundamental and applied research on mechanisms governing interactions between plants and their biotic partners.
Key Information: Strictly ecological projects that do not address underlying mechanisms are not appropriate for this program.
Description
The Plant Biotic Interactions (PBI) program is jointly supported by NSF and USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). It funds research on beneficial and antagonistic interactions between plants and viruses, bacteria, oomycetes, fungi, other plants, and invertebrate symbionts, pathogens, and pests. Projects may use current or emerging model systems, non-model systems, or agriculturally relevant plants, and may be fundamental, applied, or combine both approaches.
The program seeks deeper understanding of the mechanisms governing these associations and translation of that knowledge into agricultural practice. Relevant topics include immune recognition and signaling, metabolic interactions, host-symbiont regulation, pollen-pistil recognition, and plant-associated microbiomes. Commensalism, mutualism, parasitism, and host-pathogen interactions are all appropriate. Hypothesis-driven and discovery-driven experimental approaches are supported, and quantitative modeling combined with experimental work is encouraged.
