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.