In recent months the agency has created a new Office of Plant Genome Mapping within its Agricultural Research Service (ARS). At its helm is Miksche, national program manager at ARS. State and federal agencies spend about $10 million annually on plant genome research, about a third of which comes from USDA. The new proposal would boost USDA's contribution nearly 15-fold, to an estimated $50 million yearly.
Although plans are still preliminary, many supporters expect the expanded USDA genome project to be linked to a $500 million-per-year competitive grants program recently proposed by the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council (NRC) and independent agricultural organizations. That effort, which would boost the department's overall basic research budget by more than 50%, is itself a response to persistent criticism that the department has failed to support cutting-edge research. The competitive grants programs, backed by new assistant secretary for science Charles Hess, was ...
