crop productivity – UF Innovate https://innovate.research.ufl.edu Building business on innovation Tue, 12 Aug 2025 04:42:12 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://innovate.research.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/favicon-blue_1.png crop productivity – UF Innovate https://innovate.research.ufl.edu 32 32 UF/IFAS scientist secures $3.5M grant to study soil micro-predators https://innovate.research.ufl.edu/grant-for-micro-predators/ Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://scaddev1.com/grant-for-micro-predators/ Ever-present but undetectable to the naked eye, micro-predators like viruses, nematodes, protists, and some bacteria are constantly working in the soil to hunt and kill the pathogens that threaten plants. But how they do this “dirty” work is not well understood.

The USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) has awarded $3.5 million to a UF/IFAS scientist and his team to study these powerful organisms and share research findings to promote crop productivity and sustainable soil-health management.

Samuel Martins, a UF/IFAS assistant professor of plant pathology, is leading eight researchers from six institutions: the University of Florida; Pennsylvania State University; the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station; the University of California, Davis; William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey; and the USDA Agricultural Research Service.

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