The Florida Cattle Enhancement Board provides opportunities for researchers to develop preliminary data for future grant projects funded by other sources. We recently sat down with Dr. Brad Daigenault with the University of Florida who provided insights on how the enhancement board funding provides an impact for further research studies.
“Okay, so how do you make sure that yours gets funded? You really need to have convincing, what we call preliminary data in your grant before you even send it off to the USDA or the NIH or the NSF or whatever agency that you’re interested in having funded research. Well, how in the world do you do that if they don’t give you the money in the first place to conduct that sort of research, right? It’s really, really challenging. So, you know, folks like the FCA make this possible because they say, you know what, we are going to allow you to apply for funding and provide your group with, you know, enough resources to be able to conduct these really important experiments,” said Daigneault.
“So, for example, specifically for this experiment, we were fortunate enough to get some funding from the FCA to be able to run these studies. And now, you know, we’ve got a manuscript that’s been published in a reputable journal and with pretty convincing data that can then be put into one of these larger grants that I just mentioned to convince the government, hey, okay, we’re not just blowing smoke here. Not only do we have what we hope is a strong hypothesis and, you know, really strong justification for doing this work, but here’s the data, right? How did we get that data? Well, the FCA, you know, provided us with an avenue to get that data to advance this work moving forward. And so, you know, that’s always the goal is to be able to get, you know, very strategically to create those data that will drive your project moving forward,” said Daigneault.
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin for Southeast AgNet.