The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has announced a $2.3 million grant to the Two Blades Foundation, which supports the development and deployment of durable disease-resistant crop plants.

The grant will support four research teams that are investigating plant immunity in the United States and Europe, with a focus on three agricultural plant systems found worldwide: Brassicas (mustard greens and their relatives), which are important model organisms in plant biology; nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, and their relatives); and domesticated wheat and related species. As part of the project, the teams will develop a database that includes sequence information on the plant species investigated. The open-access database will help other scientists and agricultural agencies around the world improve disease resistance in plants and better help address food security.

The teams will be led by Jeff Dangl of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Brian Staskawicz of the University of California, Berkeley, Jonathan Jones of Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, U.K., and Detlef Weigel of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany.

"This research has the potential to be a game-changer in our understanding of how plants combat pathogens in the face of continual evolution," said Moore Foundation program officer Gary Greenburg. "If it is successfully carried out, the project will result in an unprecedented level of fundamental knowledge about the genes that control disease resistance in plants."