Location: Research Programs
Project Number: 3022-32000-018-059-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 1, 2024
End Date: May 31, 2025
Objective:
Viruses are our planet's most abundant biological entities; our understanding of their diversity and distribution is extremely poor. Relationships between agriculture practices, increasing demands for food, climate change and infectious diseases remains poorly understood. The need to meet expected population expansions will require substantial increases in crop and animal production. Changes in land use, farming practices, animal density and efforts to meet food insecurity will provide opportunities for viral spillovers and spillbacks to occur. This project will collect samples that will allow the investigation of potential zoonotic spillovers.
Approach:
Cooperator has developed an extensive network nationally and internationally and has partnerships in multiple locations in the United States and in a number of geographically diverse countries including but not limited to: Vietnam, Pakistan, N Africa, Mexico, Mongolia and elsewhere. Through this partnership samples will be collected from potential spillover events and from locations where the risk of spillover is high. These samples will be interrogated for evidence of spillover. Where feasible isolates will be recovered. This effort has the potential to provide critical data on the frequency of spillovers and the collection of samples that can be utilized for the testing of diagnostics and potentially the isolation of agents of interest.
