Food, Agriculture & Environment Security

Mitigate Challenges, Enhance Future Resilience

To help federal government agencies protect the U.S. from intentional contamination, adulteration and attack as well as accidental or unintentional contamination of food products and spread of disease, NSRI and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL) Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources (IANR) have combined their deep expertise and decades of experience to provide:

Characterization and mitigation solutions for natural, accidental and intentional chemical, biological and radiological threats and their consequences
Research solutions for environmental impacts and factors associated with chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incidents
One-health perspective solutions for incidents that cross domains with human, animal, plant and environment considerations

Unique Partnership

IANR, NSRI’s prime partner in this effort, brings wide-ranging expertise from nearly every level of food and agriculture production as well as environmental impacts. It is a worldwide leader in research related to precision ag and ag tech; integrated cropping and water; food processing; agricultural economics; beef production; and resilience of agricultural working landscapes, among many other disciplines.

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Current Priorities

Transdisciplinary teams of researchers from NSRI and the University of Nebraska System's four campuses are addressing many national security challenges for food, agriculture and environment security. Following are the current priorities for teams of faculty in this area.

Agriculture Cybersecurity

Advance protection of precision agriculture equipment by reducing vulnerabilities
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Agricultural Chemicals

Detect, transport, treat and mitigate “forever chemicals”

Extreme Weather

Identify impacts and build resiliency methods to support national security efforts

Disease Research

Develop novel methods to prevent, detect and treat diseases of agricultural animals and crops
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Built Food & Ag Environment

Investigate mechanisms to increase the resiliency of industrial food processing and agriculture processes

Project Highlights

Lincoln's Water Resource Recovery Facilities

Wastewater Samples for Early Detection of SARS-CoV-2

Santosh Pitla poses with the Flex-Ro autonomous tractor in June 2019.

Cybersecurity for Agricultural Machinery & Technology

investigates thermally induced nonlinear acoustic effects

Dual-Sensing, Health-Monitoring System for Spent Nuclear Fuel

Researchers collect and examine water samples from the Elkhorn River near Waterloo, Nebraska, as part of the EPA research project.

Lead Effort for Antimicrobial Resistance in Environment

Increased Water Use Efficiency for Crops

Pioneering Research for Pest-Borne Viral Infections of Cereal Crops

Mission Critical Collaborators

The University of Nebraska System and NSRI are well-positioned with deep resources, experience and expertise. Following are just a few of the internal collaborators identified and poised to contribute within this focus area.