Christopher Anderson | Aug 6, 1989 | 4 min read
WASHINGTON-In an ambitious answer to the National Institutes of Health's Human Genome Project, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has sprouted plans for a parallel project to map the genetic structure of key food plants. The proposal, presented by USDA program manager Jerome Miksche at a meeting of the NIH genome project's advisory committee in June, would identify genetic traits that can increase yield and disease resistance. The price tag is estimated to be $500 million over 10 years. In recen