The California State University Agricultural Research Initiative (ARI) is a diverse and comprehensive applied agricultural and environmental research program that leverages public funding with existing university and industry capital and intellectual collateral through collaborative university-industry partnerships, in order to focus on finding solutions for priority issues challenging California agriculture and the environment.
Specifically, the ARI is a California State University System (CSU) multi-campus diversified applied agricultural and environmental sciences collaborative research consortium between the CSU’s four university campuses having colleges of agriculture: California State University, Fresno (Fresno State); California Polytechnic State University, Obispo (Cal Poly, SLO); California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly, Pomona); and California State University, Chico (Chico State). In addition to member campus collaborations, the ARI also encourages and facilitates strong CSU collaborative research partnerships with other qualified university and professional research organization faculty and research scientists such as those from the University of California (US), UC Cooperative Extension (UCCE), and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Significant CSU, UC, USDA, and industry collaboration is realized through the university-industry partnerships that characterize ARI projects. The ARI is administered by the California Agricultural Technology Institute (CATI), located at California State University, Fresno.
The ARI fosters the development and evaluation of new and promising technologies that have the potential for improving food safety, environmental stewardship, economic performance, and long-term sustainability of California's agriculture industry. ARI projects and programs build upon a successful record of past applied research accomplishments and augment, enhance, and extend the basic research conducted by the nation's land grant universities.
The ARI annually allocates $800,000 in support of a multi-campus shared pool of competitive research funding for research of statewide significance. This funding is restricted to public domain projects and is available annually to any qualified ARI member campus faculty or research scientist, or to other CSU, UC, UC Extension, USDA, and/or other qualified industry research scientists who have established an appropriate collaborative partnership with at least one qualified faculty or research staff at one or more of the ARI member campuses.
ARI is in the process of finalizing the next call for pre-proposals, and this should be issued by the end of May, with pre-proposals due during the third week of August. The full application (for invited applicants) should be available during the 1st or 2nd week of September. Final full proposals are due around December 15 for a July 1, 2010 start date. Realistically, with the budget situation, grant funds won’t be available until October, 2010. The final timeline, with confirmation of these dates, should be available when the pre-proposal solicitation is issued. When available, the application forms should be posted on their website: http://ari.calstate.edu/forms.aspx
For more information, please go to the program website:
http://ari.calstate.edu/