[Faculty] FW: Engagement Opportunity: DARPA BTO Releases Solicitation for Agricultural Defense Innovations

[Chorover, Jon - (chorover)]

Dear Colleagues,

Forwarding information on a DARPA opportunity focused on threats to the agricultural supply chain with specific details below.  Please feel free to reach out to me if you are interested in pursuing this and would like to discuss.

Note that the long-form of the RFP can be found here:  https://www.darpa.mil/research/programs/ag-bto

Jon


From: Sarah Gianotti <Sgianotti at lewis-burke.com<mailto:Sgianotti at lewis-burke.com>>
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2025 6:04 AM
Subject: [EXT] Engagement Opportunity: DARPA BTO Releases Solicitation for Agricultural Defense Innovations


External Email

________________________________
Hello,

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Biological Technologies Office (BTO) released a Special Topic Area (STA) solicitation, Ag x BTO, seeking proposals to strengthen agricultural defense across the supply chain against both natural and manmade threats. This limited-time solicitation requires applicants to submit 7-minute video pitches addressing one or more of the following technical focus areas:


  *   Early Warning Systems: Improving surveillance tools for detecting chemical and biological threats, with a focus on real-time monitoring, autonomous functionality, and detailed location data.

  *   Rapid-Response Agricultural Defenses: Developing short-term solutions to protect crops from new and spreading threats through containment and protection strategies.

  *   Next-Gen Crop Engineering: Scaling up advanced crop engineering to provide lasting defenses, including both preventative and long-term resilience approaches.

  *   Predictive Threat Modeling: Building integrated models to forecast how threats evolve and the efficiency of agricultural responses.

  *   Attribution & Human Intervention Analysis: Creating new tools to detect signs of human influence and trace the source of threats, helping inform decisions during attribution processes.
Selected proposals may be invited to a workshop and subsequent Pitch Day event in Washington, DC, serving as a gateway to further DARPA program development and funding opportunities. Proposal submissions are due by August 31, 2025, with early submissions encouraged for the opportunity for feedback from BTO. All U.S.-based entities, including large and small businesses, universities, nonprofits are eligible to apply. Additional information can be found in Lewis-Burke's attached analysis.
More information is available on sam.gov under Opportunity Number "DARPA-PS-25-02-BTO-01", and the full announcement is available here<https://www.darpa.mil/research/programs/ag-bto>.
Best,
Sarah Gianotti




[cid:image001.png at 01DBDBD7.DC3E8CE0]

Sarah Gianotti

Legislative Research Assistant

440 1st Street NW, Suite 700

Washington, D.C. 20001

E  sgianotti at lewis-burke.com<mailto:sgianotti at lewis-burke.com>

T  +1 202.559.0639

W lewis-burke.com

[https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.wisestamp.com/social_icons/square/linkedin.png]linkedin.com/in/gianottisarah/<http://inkedin.com/in/gianottisarah>



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.cals.arizona.edu/pipermail/faculty/attachments/20250613/eaea8ab1/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 75535 bytes
Desc: image001.png
URL: <https://list.cals.arizona.edu/pipermail/faculty/attachments/20250613/eaea8ab1/attachment-0002.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.png
Type: image/png
Size: 429 bytes
Desc: image002.png
URL: <https://list.cals.arizona.edu/pipermail/faculty/attachments/20250613/eaea8ab1/attachment-0003.png>