The Open Philanthropy Project recommended a grant of $200,000 over three years to UC Berkeley to support Professor Brian Staskawicz’s work on CRISPR modifications to increase drought tolerance in Indian rice. It is Open Philanthropy's understanding that sporadic drought has caused Indian rice yields to become erratic, which has negative impacts on the livelihood of about 100 million small farmers. The proposed experiments, which will be funded in part by a match from the Innovative Genomics Institute, will exploit recent advances in genome editing.
This grant follows Open Philanthropy's December 2016 support of a plant pathology workshop at UC Berkeley, and falls within its interest in funding scientific research.