Plant Biology Research and Training for the 21st Century (1992) / Chapter Skim
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Pages 1-12
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From page 1... ...
We wall never fully understand the global environment-or have a serious hope of successfully managing it in the face of explosive population growth, severe shifts in land use, arid other effects of human habitation-until we have a much more comprehensive understanding of plants, their cellular processes, and their ecolog, and population biology. Plants are critical to human health.
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The Committee on an Examination of Plant-Science Programs in the United States was established in the Commission on Life Sciences of the Nationad Research Council to review the data available and to consider whether the academic and research institutions of this country are prepared to address the opportunities in modern plant biology. The committee also was asked to recommend how the nation might change its approach to the support of plant sciences to reduce the imbalance in the emphasis given in laboratories and classrooms to plant biology relative to other rSelds of biology.
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These impediments include an insufficient focus on plant science as a basic discipline of biology; the isolation of plant sciences Tom other disciplines of biology; the insufficient funding and fragmentation of support for basic plant-biology research; the sometimes inappropriate philosophy and rationale for funding; and the insufficient support for training, instrumentation, and facilities. A downward spiral (Figure 1)
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~ beginning of large-scale federal support of science, the strategies used by the venous federal agencies to fund scientific research in support of societal goals have constituted an expenment. NIH and NSF have based funding decisions on competitive procedures designed to recognize individual meet; USDA has based funding decisions on institutional, political, arid historical considerations that do not preclude but that also do not necessanly reward or reinforce individual merit.
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of the National Institutes of Health. NIGMS is the extraIllura1 arm of a federal agency with an applied mission and focuses on basic science and support of the scientific infrastructure In performing its mission.
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· Plant interactions with the biotic and abiotic environment, including nitrogen fixation' interactions with beneficial microorganisms, pathogenesis, the genetics and molecular biology of plant defense and stress responses, and community ecology. The comlriittee presents in Chapter 4 three recommendations that embody the above principles and views.
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The fiscal year 1992 National Research Initiative Competitive Grants Program (NRICGP) enlarges USDA's small program of grants to support extramural plant-biology research related to agriculture.
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of the Department of Health and Human Services and its National Institutes of Health for support of the extramural and intramural research, training, and infrastructural elements of sciences relevant to its mission. The committee recognizes that the recomTnendation for the establishment of an institute is proposed at a time of both national budgetary constraint and while the USDA National Research Initiative is in midcourse of implementation.
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We believe further that the formation of NIB is the next and natural step im the growth of the competitive grants program at USDA and needs to be discussed now, and the groundwork bald, before the completion of ache five-year plan to build the National Research Initiative is completed.
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The National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation could provide the training grants and fellowships that are essential for training more plant scientists. However, we urge USDA to consider developing large-scale trading programs.
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The estimated cost for the first year is $280 million; this includes about $150 million already allotted for competitive grants programs by several federal agencies. Our best cost estimate for the year 2000 is about $520 Bullion (in 1991 dollars)
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