In attendance:  Wendie Cohick (Chair), Puneet Srivastava, Jake Bowman, Tyler Messerschmidt, Brian Farkas, Lynne McLandsborough, Beth Gugino, Jason Hubbart, Antonio DiTommaso, Eric von Wettberg, Chris Smart, Anton Bekkerman, Troy Ott, Jason White, Lee Hecker, Vagner Benedito, Anna Katharine Mansfield, Josh Kohut, Tsakani Ngomane, Kal Kalavacharla, Rick Rhodes, David Leibovitz

 

Multistate Activities Committee Recommendations to agInnovation Northeast

• Recommendations to approve multistate activities

  • NE_TEMP2501 Chemical Ecology (Blair Siegfried)

    • Peer reviews are generally supportive (good to excellent, one fair) and all recommend continuation of the project. All reviewer comments were addressed by the technical team and revisions were made accordingly.

    • The MAC encourages the group to increase its participation beyond CA, MA, NJ, and NY.

    • NE_TEMP2501 was approved unanimously as NE2501.

  • NECC_TEMP2501 Sustainable Farm Energy Production and Use (Puneet Srivastava)

    • Peer reviews are generally supportive (good to excellent), one reviewer called for some revisions to which the committee responded and revised the proposal accordingly.

    • The shared farm energy teaching curriculum for ag professionals is a strength of this coordinating committee.

    • The group is encouraged to convert this coordinating committee effort into a multistate research project either in the upcoming year, or in a future iteration.

    • NEASDA (Regional State Departments of Ag) approved a regional working group on creating a bioeconomy corridor in the Northeast, and all directors are encouraged to engage with their respective state agencies to advance this initiative.

    • NECC_TEMP2501 was approved unanimously as NECC_TEMP2501.

• Administrative Adviser Nominations for Multistate Activities

  • NE2220: Multi-state Coordinated Evaluation of Grape Cultivars and Clones (Margaret Smith) – Anna Katharine Mansfield has been nominated

  • NE2231: Collaborative Potato Breeding and Variety Development Activities to Enhance Farm Sustainability in the Eastern US (Margaret Smith) – Anton Bekkerman has been nominated

  • NE2201: Mycobacterial Diseases of Animals (Rick Rhodes to continue)

  • NE1:Northeastern Regional Center for Rural Development (Blair Siegfried) – Troy Ott to serve as AA

  • NE2334:Genetic Bases for Resistance and Immunity to Avian Diseases (Bob Taylor, WVU) – Chris Ashwell, WVU has been nominated

  • NRSP8:Genomic Capacity: Building Applied Genomic Capacity for Animal Industries (John Kirby) – Eric von Wettberg has been nominated

  • The full slate of Administrative Adviser nominations as presented was approved unanimously.

• Discussion Items

  • Projects inconsistent with Executive Orders

    • Should a multistate activity’s objective be inconsistent with current Executive Orders, do not have participants sign on to those specific objectives.

  • Gain of Function Research

    • Penn State has had some research activities deferred and terminated under the justification of “gain of function”; Purdue has had similar experiences.The directive from NIFA on terminations was for the institution to go into the NRS system and terminate the project.

    • “Gain of function” is taking different strains of organisms and making them more aggressive.In some cases, PIs were not specific enough to clarify the specific strain of organism they had been working with.

    • Current practice for institutional appeal is to clarify to NIFA on a case-by-case basis that the research activities should not be considered gain of function.

    • Penn State’s responses to NIFA need to be vetted centrally; Purdue’s responses to NIFA came from the specific investigators

 

NIFA Update

• Regarding funding; NIFA is awaiting its apportionment from the Office of Management and Budget, which should arrive soon.

• AFRI Foundational and Applied Science RFA has been released

 

Discussion Items

• agInnovation Northeast Spring Meeting options, March 2026:  please consider hosting the meeting at your station or institution.

• The 2025 National Joint agInnovation and Cooperative Extension Meeting will be held in St. Louis on September 15-18.agInnovation Northeast will have a business meeting during the event.

  • Meeting landing page (registration, lodging, agenda):  https://web.cvent.com/event/3bc895a4-4cfa-4dd5-b4cb-342cc4ed6cc0/summary

• agInnovation Northeast Call Series:next two meetings are scheduled for 10/16 and 11/20.Future calls will be scheduled so that they do not conflict with Northeast Extension (NEED)’s standing call.

• agInnovation Northeast Executive Committee

  • Chris Smart has been nominated to serve as the next officer-at-large, and rotate on to the agInnovation Northeast Executive Committee.  Chris’s nomination was approved unanimously.

• Wendie Cohick was thanked for her service as agInnovation Northeast Chair.

 

The meeting adjourned at 8:59 am Eastern Time.