The fourth batch of proposals funded by CAFNR’s Joy of Discovery Seed Grant Program was recently announced by Shibu Jose, CAFNR Associate Dean for Research. The Joy of Discovery Seed Grant Program supports nascent, multidisciplinary research with the goal of developing a competitive proposal for federal funding. The following proposals were selected (listed by the PI, Co-PI/s and title of the project):

• David Mendoza Cozatl (Plant Science and Technology); Characterization of Soil Microbial Communities Across Ecoregions as a Step Towards Improving nutrient transport efficiency and selectivity by means of continuous evolution
• Emily Althoff (Plant Science and Technology); Connor Crouch (USDA Forest Service), Lauren Pile Knapp (USDA Forest Service) and Robbie Doerhoff, (Missouri Department of Conservation); Grounded in Biodiversity: Ground Beetle Responses to Management Treatments in Reconstructed Prairies
• Katherine Nelson (School of Natural Resources); Timothy Reinbott and Steven Pryor; From page to desktop. Developing an AI-assisted data extraction workflow for long-term historic agricultural data
• Craig Schenck (Biochemistry); Adam Yokom; A Metabolic Complex Regulates Plant Defense Metabolite Production
• Zipei Zhang (Food, Nutrition and Exercise Sciences); Mengshi Lin and Changwoo Do (Oak Ride National Laboratory); Smart Thermoresponsive Antimicrobial Coatings for Scalable and Sustainable Food
• Michael Stambaugh (School of Natural Resources); Laura A.E. Marshall; Developing novel metrics to predict fire-driven vegetation type conversion and forest loss in western U.S. wildfire crisis landscapes
• Jaime Barros (Plant Science and Technology); Dissecting the Lignin Metabolic Pathway with Cellular Resolution
• Ruojie Zhang (Food, Nutrition & Exercise Sciences); Zipei Zhang and Bongkosh Vardhanabhuti; Novel Use of Pulse Proteins to Develop and Produce Fat Replacers for Reduced-Calorie Emulsion-Based Foods