Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack recently attended a groundbreaking ceremony in Pullman, Wash., to kick off construction of a plant sciences building for USDA Agricultural Research Service and Washington State University scientists, according to a news release.
The new building will be on the campus of WSU in Eastern Washington. Research at the facility is to focus on improving the health, sustainability and profitability of dryland and irrigated agriculture in the Pacific Northwest.
“Robust and innovative agricultural research is a requisite to confronting many of the challenges we are facing, from feeding a growing world population and improving farming practices, to tackling the effects of a changing climate,” Vilsack said in the release.
The new building will house about 30 ARS and WSU scientists. The collaborative research is anticipated to benefit growers, commodity groups, agricultural businesses and the public, which depend heavily on this partnership to solve agricultural and environmental problems, the release said.
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“The collaboration between USDA and Washington State University [that] we celebrate today opens a new era in a long research partnership and pushes the boundaries of what is possible for agriculture through a commitment to ensuring our farmers are equipped with world-class research that leads to real-world, practical solutions,” Vilsack said.
The collaboration between WSU and ARS began in 1931 and is one of the nation’s most robust federal-state partnerships, the release said.
Commitment to research
Earlier this year, USDA released a three-year science and research strategy that establishes a scientific framework to transform the U.S. food system and support the nation’s farmers, ranchers, producers and foresters. Facilities like the new ARS plant sciences building enhance USDA’s continued efforts to respond to the needs of the diverse communities served throughout the nation, the release said.
“The groundbreaking of the new USDA-WSU building reflects USDA’s commitment to innovative research and cutting-edge solutions that make our farmers more productive, profitable and resilient,” USDA Chief Scientist and Undersecretary for Research, Education and Economics Chavonda Jacobs-Young said in the release.
It also underscores the importance of partnerships with land-grant universities and USDA’s commitment that the best and brightest agriculture scientists and researchers are working in state-of-the-art facilities equipped with the tools they need to take on the world’s greatest agricultural challenges, Jacobs-Young said.
Four ARS research units will be housed in the new building: Wheat Health, Genetics and Quality; Grain Legume Genetics and Physiology; Northwest Sustainable Agroecosystems; and Plant Germplasm Introduction and Testing. In addition, members of the WSU Departments of Plant Pathology, Crop, Soil Sciences, and Horticulture will share lab and office space with federal researchers, the release said.
