Washington, DC - Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) today announced that he's secured the U.S. House of Representative's approval of nearly $5.6 million for a variety of agricultural research projects at Cornell University.  Hinchey requested that the funds be included in the Agriculture Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2010, which the House approved yesterday.

"These new federal funds will help Cornell University continue its outstanding research efforts that are helping to identify ways to make farms in New York and across the country more profitable and productive," said Hinchey, who is a member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture. "These federal funds will improve agricultural products that will ultimately benefit all New Yorkers."

The funds Hinchey secured are allocated as follows:

·  $1,454,000, Viticulture Consortium: The Viticulture Consortium (VC) is a multi-state special research grant that operates as a national competitive grants program to fund applied, mission specific research relevant to grape growing.  The VC enhances research coordination and collaboration, improves efficiency, and eliminates duplication of effort. 

·  $939,000, Apple Fire Blight Research: The funds will be used for research to understand and manage apple fire blight disease by investigating the molecular basis of disease resistance in apples and developing disease resistant apple varieties.  Fire blight is the most damaging disease affecting apple trees in New York state and nationally.  Crop and tree losses and the costs of control measures cost more than $100 million per year nationally.  Apple is the biggest tree fruit crop in New York, worth more than $2 billion annually.  New York’s 694 family apple farms create 10,000 agricultural jobs.   Only Washington State grows more apples than New York.

·  $693,000, Food Safety Research Consortium: The Food Safety Research Consortium works with consumer groups, industry, and government to conduct food safety research and to facilitate the development and use of tools to help the food industry and regulatory agencies improve food safety.

·  $693,000, Livestock and Dairy Policy: This program will help Cornell and Texas A&M evaluate policy proposals of national significance to the dairy and livestock industries.  Both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Congress rely on this program for analysis of proposals that affect the dairy and livestock industries.

 ·  $615,000, National Beef Cattle Genetic Evaluation: Will help Cornell and other universities with work to develop sophisticated genetic evaluation techniques to assist beef producers in breeding cattle for select traits.

·  $429,000, Minor Animal Drug Use: Funds will be used for a national consortium of four colleges of veterinary medicine - including Cornell University - that work together to develop and test orphan veterinary drugs and vaccines for specialty animal species. The Minor Use Animal Drug Program identifies animal drug needs for minor species and minor uses in major species, generates and disseminates data for safe and effective therapeutic applications, and facilitates FDA/CVM approvals for drugs identified as a priority for a minor species or minor use in major species.

·  $377,000, Human Nutrition: The Human Nutrition Grant supports research to increase fundamental knowledge of human nutrition, with a special focus on nutritional requirements and nutrient dynamics during pregnancy in ethnically and genetically diverse populations.

 ·  $258,000, Environmental Research:  The Environmental Research grant is administered by Cornell's North American Nitrogen Center.  The program seeks to gain a better understanding of the sources and sinks of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment in a large rural watershed of mixed land use.

 ·  $131,000, Computational Agriculture: The Computational Agriculture Initiative funds a program to enable farmers to use high performance computational tools to make sound crop management decisions.

The Senate now has to take up its own version of the Agriculture Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2010.