10/21/08 WSU Gets Research Grant

WSU Gets Research Grant. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Taking agriculture into the future is being helped along with a new research grant awarded to WSU. The USDA had made some $28 million dollars available. According to WSU's Associate Dean and Director of Ag Research, Ralph Cavalieri, the industry has been in need of assistance. CAVALIERI: As many people know the specialty crops, the horticultural crops in particular historically have not had many grant funding opportunities from the USDA and so that industry with a lot of leadership shown by Washington's tree fruit industry worked with Congress in the Farm Bill to come up with a whole new granting program called the Specialty Crop Research Initiative. The WSU faculty had 30 days in order to put together and present their proposals. In all 31 proposals were submitted. CAVALIERI: One of the things I think that helped us on this was we've had faculty working in teams on horticultural crops, specialty crops for a long time and it turns out we were well positioned to put in a number of excellent proposals. And so we ended up getting awards for about $3.3 million. WSU was one of the largest grant recipients. CAVALIERI: The largest of those was $2.2. million dealing with biological control to stabilize western orchard integrated pest management systems. This has long been an area of strength led by the faculty out of our Wenatchee Tree Fruit Research and Extension Service. Tomorrow, more on the WSU research grants. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.