Emergency Citrus Disease Research and Extension Pre-Applications

In FY 2026, the ECDRE program, under Assistance Listing 10.309, is soliciting proposals to develop effective tactics and strategies to control HLB and its disease complex for financially sustainable citrus production in the United States. All projects funded by the ECDRE program will incorporate collaborative approaches that integrate available knowledge to develop new solutions that can be deployed by growers to manage and prevent HLB infection in the near term.

Pre-applicants for the ECDRE must meet all the requirements discussed in this NOFO. Failure to meet the eligibility criteria by the application deadline may result in exclusion from consideration for those new to Federal financial assistance, NIFA’s About Grants provides highly recommended information about grants and other resources to help understand the Federal awards process. Pre-applications for the ECDRE may only be submitted by Federal agencies, national laboratories, colleges and universities, research institutions and organizations, private organizations or corporations, State Agricultural Experiment Stations, the Cooperative Extension Service, individuals, or groups consisting of two or more of these entities. Duplicate or Multiple Submission. Duplicate or multiple submissions with the same lead PD are not allowed. NIFA will disqualify both applications if an applicant submits duplicate or multiple submissions. However, an applicant may act as a Co-PD on multiple unique submissions as well as submit a single unique application as the Lead PD in the same fiscal year. USDA will not accept competitive applications for grant and cooperative agreements submitted for dangerous gain-of-function research, as defined in Section 8 of E.O. 14292.

SCRI has instituted a two-phase review process. The first phase of the review process is the Industry Relevance Review. Each Pre-Application containing an SRS will be evaluated in a two-part process. First, each SRS will be screened to ensure that it meets the administrative requirements as set forth in this NOFO. Administrative requirements include meeting the application deadline; meeting eligibility requirements; satisfying program intent; inclusion of all required sections of the SRS package; and adherence to guidelines. Second, an SRS that meets these requirements will be evaluated for relevance by a panel of industry reviewers representing closely allied crops. The panel will recommend which applications to invite for submission of a full application. Invited applicants will be sent instructions on how to access the full NOFO via email once the relevance review is completed. NIFA will send copies of reviews, not including the identity of reviewers, and a summary of the panel comments to the PD after the review process has been completed. Specific details about the criteria for selecting proposals is included in the program NOFO. See the NOFO for more information.

This program has no statutory formula. Matching requirements are not applicable to this assistance listing. MOE requirements are not applicable to this assistance listing.

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