Specialty Crop Research Initiative Request for Pre-applications | USDA NIFA SCRI 006064

Opportunity Information: Apply for USDA NIFA SCRI 006064

The Specialty Crop Research Initiative (SCRI) Request for Pre-applications is a mandatory federal grant opportunity administered by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) under CFDA 10.309. Its overall aim is to fund research and extension work that tackles high-priority, real-world problems facing the specialty crop sector, with an emphasis on challenges that matter at national, regional, or multi-state scales. The program is designed to strengthen the long-term sustainability of food and agriculture systems that involve specialty crops, and it explicitly includes both conventional and organic production systems.

Projects submitted under this opportunity are expected to be problem-driven and industry-relevant, meaning the work should be framed around critical needs in specialty crops and should generate practical outcomes that can be adopted by growers, supply-chain partners, educators, or related stakeholders. The scope is broad enough to include both research activities and extension activities, with the intent that new knowledge and innovations are not only generated but also translated into usable practices, tools, technologies, or decision-support resources.

To be responsive to the program, a proposed project must address at least one of five required focus areas. The first focus area covers crop improvement through plant breeding, genetics, genomics, and related methods that enhance crop characteristics, such as quality traits, resilience, yield, or other performance attributes important to specialty crop markets and production environments. The second focus area centers on pests and diseases, including identifying threats, understanding them, and developing strategies to manage or reduce their impacts; notably, this area also includes threats to specialty crop pollinators, reflecting the importance of pollination to many fruit, nut, and vegetable systems. The third focus area emphasizes improving production efficiency and the full chain of handling and processing, with goals tied to boosting productivity and profitability over the long term; this area also leaves room for work connected to specialty crop policy and marketing when it supports those long-term outcomes. The fourth focus area targets new innovations and technology, including improved mechanization and postharvest technologies that delay or inhibit ripening, which can reduce losses, extend shelf life, and improve marketability. The fifth focus area addresses food safety, supporting methods and systems to prevent, detect, monitor, control, and respond to potential food safety hazards in production, handling, and processing contexts connected to specialty crops.

This particular posting is a request for pre-applications, meaning prospective applicants are first asked to submit a preliminary application as part of the program’s process. Pre-applications are limited to a defined set of eligible applicants: Federal agencies, national laboratories, colleges and universities, research institutions and organizations, private organizations or corporations, State Agricultural Experiment Stations, Cooperative Extension Services, individuals, or groups made up of two or more of these entity types. In other words, eligibility spans public, private, and academic organizations, as well as collaborative groups, reflecting the program’s interest in multi-entity and multi-state work that can move the specialty crop industry forward.

Administrative details in the source record identify the opportunity as “USDA NIFA SCRI 006064,” categorized as agriculture, using the grant funding instrument type, with an original closing date of November 15, 2016, and a creation date of September 27, 2016. The listing does not provide an award ceiling or expected award count in the provided data, so applicants would typically need to refer to the full funding announcement or related guidance for funding levels, project types, and submission requirements beyond the pre-application stage.

• The National Institute of Food and Agriculture in the agriculture sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Specialty Crop Research Initiative Request for Pre-applications" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 10.309.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2016-09-27.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2016-11-15. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

Apply for USDA NIFA SCRI 006064

[Watch] Creating a grant proposal using the step-by-step wizard inside the applicant portal: