West Virginia State University announced Thursday that it would be receiving grant funds totalling more than $1.6 million from USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

The grant will help the university to fund for seven proposed agricultural research projects including joint initiatives with Alcorn State University in Mississippi and Southern University in Louisiana.

As per the stipulations of USDA, no one school can receive more than $1.8 million of the allotted $18 million, that is 10 per cent. Hence, the WSU's total award amount of $1.63 million is the largest amount the university has received in one funding cycle from the competitive grant program.

The historically black public college is one of 18 institutions in the nation eligible to compete in the program, exclusive to the nation's 1890 land-grant universities.

"To be one of the smallest and youngest research programs in the 1890 land-grant family, WVSU receiving nearly the maximum amount of allotted funding is amazing," said Dr. Robert Barney, associate dean and associate director of research at WVSU.

The '1890 Institution Teaching and Research Capacity Building Grants Program' is aimed at strengthening the bond between 1890 institutions, other colleges and universities, USDA and private industry while simultaneously improving the quality of academic and research programs at the 1890 institutions.

Among the seven proposed projects, three will exclusively focus on the research to improve agriculture production in the state.

While the scope of each of these differs, the focus of the work will be on plant breeding techniques meant to increase disease resistance in crops such as tomatoes and melons; understanding reproductive barriers to improve cultivated tomatoes; and studying the health benefits of squash and pumpkins, including their potential as anti-cancer and anti-diabetic agents.

Other projects deal with the study of hibiscus flowers and the application of genomic technologies to help restore the land of mined area of Appalachian range.

The remaining projects are teaching grants. One will expose college students to global genomic impacts in agriculture, and another will use biotechnology and crop diversity-oriented curricula to recruit high school students into Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines.