Advanced undergraduate and graduate students can apply for new seed grants of up to $20,000 to support research that moves wheat disease resistance toward practical use in breeding programs and farmers’ fields. Applications are due Sept. 30, 2026.
The Translational Wheat Health Seed Grants are part of the Global Wheat Health Alliance (GWHA), an international effort established to connect gene discovery, field testing and pre-emptive breeding so that stronger disease resistance reaches new wheat varieties and hybrids. The effort comes as wheat pathogens evolve and spread faster than the scientific workforce can deploy countermeasures, with new races of wheat rust and emerging threats such as wheat blast increasing the need for trained breeders, pathologists and molecular biologists who can work across institutions and borders.
The seed grants are the competitive research component of the alliance and are coordinated by the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI) at Cornell University. Two funding opportunities are available: Focused Seed Grants of up to $10,000 and Translational Team Grants of up to $20,000. Projects may run for up to 18 months.
“By giving students hands-on experience in global wheat health, we are preparing them to respond to diseases that move quickly and cross borders,” said Maricelis Acevedo, the BGRI’s director of science and a research professor in Cornell’s School of Integrative Plant Science. “These grants let students work across that path, from a scientific question to a result that a breeding or national research program can put to use.”
Proposals must address at least one of five priority areas: moving resistance into farmer-ready wheat; gene discovery and marker development; wheat blast resistance diversification; disease phenotyping and data quality; or pathogen surveillance and diagnostic tool adoption.
Focused Seed Grants support student-led research addressing at least one of the priority areas. Potential projects could include disease phenotyping at a GWHA field site, targeted genotyping or sequencing, validation of a marker or diagnostic, or structured analysis of existing GWHA materials or data.
Translational Team Grants support projects of greater scope conducted in formal partnership with a national agricultural research system (NARS) or CIMMYT program. Projects must produce a deliverable that a breeding or national program can use, such as a validated protocol, a characterized resistance source moved into an adapted background, a surveillance or diagnostic workflow transferred to a partner institution, or an interoperable dataset. Written concurrence from the partner is required.
Every proposal must also identify a clear translational pathway by specifying who will use the result, what decision it will inform and when.
Eligible applicants must be advanced undergraduates or students enrolled in MSc, MPS or PhD programs at accredited U.S. universities and in good academic standing. Applicants must serve as the intellectual lead for the proposed work and have a faculty advisor who endorses the project. Advanced undergraduate applicants must be within two years of completing their degree.
Applications must be submitted online as a single PDF. Awards are expected to be announced Oct. 12, with projects able to begin as early as Oct. 15. Full application requirements and submission instructions are available on the BGRI seed grants page. Questions may be directed to Acevedo at ma934@cornell.edu.
The Global Wheat Health Alliance is co-led by CIMMYT and Cornell University/BGRI, with partners including the John Innes Centre, the University of Maryland, the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization, the Bangladesh Wheat and Maize Research Institute, and the Instituto Nacional de Innovación Agropecuaria y Forestal of Bolivia.
