The Center for Plants and Human Health: An interdisciplinary approach

Abstract

The current model for competitive research funding in the United States is primarily single-principal-investigator grants in a single discipline, but new approaches to the relationships between plants and human health will require collaboration among multiple investigators across several disciplines. At present, funding for this kind of work is rather limited. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) competitive grants are generally too small to fund multiple-investigator projects of this type. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine funds important work related to this topic, but its scope and funding base are limited. If agriculture is to remain viable in the United States, and if medicine is to take full advantage of our knowledge-base in plants and nutrition and their role in the prevention of disease as well as cure, we need to define a new paradigm for funding this interdisciplinary work.