Funding- DOE - Rhizosphere Observations Optimizing Terrestrial
Sequestration (ROOTS); May 26, 2016
Agency
Department
of Energy
Advanced Research Projects Agency
Description
Agricultural
intensification has resulted in a ten-fold increase in crop yield over the past
hundred years, but these advances have not occurred without costs: soils have
eroded and soil quality has decreased, incurring a soil carbon debt equivalent
to 65 ppm of atmospheric CO2. Increased fertilizer use causes the majority of
the emissions of the greenhouse gas N2O, and drought stress increasingly
threatens yields. Given the scale of domestic (and global) agriculture
resources, there is great potential to reverse these trends by focusing plant
breeding toward new cultivars with enhanced root systems to improve soil
quality and improve biogeochemical cycling. Development of new root-focused
cultivars could dramatically and economically reduce atmospheric CO2
concentrations without decreasing agricultural yields. To this end, the ARPA-E
program, Rhizosphere Observations Optimizing Terrestrial Sequestration (ROOTS),
is pursuing technologies that increase the precision and throughput of crop
breeding for improved root-soil biogeochemical function. ROOTS
seeks to develop novel, non-destructive, field deployable technologies
to: (1) measure root functional properties; (2) measure soil functional
properties; and (3) advance predictive and extensible models that accelerate
cultivar selection and development. These technologies—especially integrated
systems—could greatly increase the speed and efficacy of discovery, field
translation, and deployment of improved crops and production systems that
significantly improve soil carbon accumulation and storage, decrease N2O
emissions, and improve water efficiency. The aspiration of the ROOTS program is
to develop crops that enable a 50% increase in carbon deposition depth and accumulation,
a 50% decrease in fertilizer N2O emissions, and a 25% increase in water
productivity. Taken over the 160 million hectares of actively managed U.S.
cropland, such advances could mitigate ~10% of total U.S. greenhouse gas
emissions (GHG) annually over a multi-decade period, while also improving the
climate resiliency of U.S. agricultural production. To obtain a copy of the
Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) please go to the ARPA-E website at https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov.
ARPA-E will not review or consider concept papers submitted through other
means. For detailed guidance on using ARPA-E eXCHANGE,
please refer to the ARPA-E eXCHANGE User Guide (https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Manuals.aspx).
Announcement
Number:
DE-FOA-0001565
Closing
Date:
May
26, 2016
Link
to Full Announcement
http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=282948
Contact
Information