How NCSFR Funding is Driving Research Across the Pacific Northwest

A Collaborative Model for Research Investment

For over two decades, the Northwest Center for Small Fruits Research has supported work that directly impacts growers, researchers, and the agricultural industry across the Pacific Northwest.

NCSFR operates on a straightforward but powerful idea: collaboration produces better outcomes. By partnering with industry stakeholders and land-grant universities, NCSFR ensures that research investment is guided by real-world production challenges — informed by those closest to the work.

This approach is designed to solve regionally specific problems while strengthening the entire small fruits, grapes, and speciality crops sector:

• Efficient use of research funding
• Shared expertise across institutions
• Greater impact across commodities and regions

2025 Funding at a Glance

In 2025, NCSFR distributed over $1.1 million in competitive research funding across 18 continuing funded proposals — investment that reflects targeted priorities, not even distribution by default.

Where the Funding Goes

The 2025 portfolio reflects a deliberate balance across crop categories. Grape research receives the largest share at 45.1%, followed by berry research at 33.3%. Combined berry and grape projects account for another 5.8%, with additional programs addressing cross-commodity and regional challenges making up the remainder. This diversified approach keeps research from becoming siloed — individual commodity programs feed into broader agricultural knowledge shared across the region.

Strengthening Institutions Through Collaboration

Funding flows to where the expertise is strongest. In 2025, five institutions carried out NCSFR-supported work across the Pacific Northwest:

This distribution reflects coordinated investment in the strongest research capacity available — rather than concentrating funding at a single institution, NCSFR leverages expertise where it exists, keeping the research network connected across state lines.

Investing in the Future: The Plant Improvement Initiative

Beyond annual project funding, NCSFR has made a long-term commitment to plant breeding. For over 20 years, the Plant Improvement Initiative has channeled dedicated support to breeding and fruit quality research at OSU, WSU, and USDA–ARS.

Over the past two decades, NCSFR has invested $3.3 million in breeding and fruit quality research — work that shapes the long-term viability of small fruits, grapes, and speciality crops production across the Pacific Northwest.

This initiative focuses on the challenges that define long-term competitiveness:

• Developing new blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, and strawberry varieties
• Improving disease resistance, fruit quality, and machine-harvestability
• Supporting season extension for Pacific Northwest growing conditions
• Maintaining global competitiveness for regional growers

Supporting public plant breeding through the PII ensures that growers retain access to improved varieties built for the region — not developed primarily for other markets.

Supporting the Next Generation of Researchers

Research capacity depends on people as much as funding. In 2025, NCSFR invested in the researchers who will carry this work forward:

Supporting 11 undergraduate students, 15 graduate students, 7 doctoral scholars, and 4 post-doctoral researchers in a single year represents a meaningful commitment to continuity. Agricultural innovation does not happen in one generation — it is built across them.

From Research to Real-World Application

Research is only valuable if it reaches the people who need it. NCSFR continues to build and maintain its research library — working toward nearly 30 years of funded projects made accessible to growers, researchers, and industry partners across the Pacific Northwest.

Completed research fact sheets and newsletters are distributed quarterly, and staff actively attend berry and grape commission meetings across Washington, Oregon, and Idaho to share findings directly with producers.

This communication effort is as deliberate as the funding itself. The goal is not to produce reports that sit in archives, but to move knowledge into commercial production across the region.

Why This Model Works

The NCSFR model works because it treats funding, research, and application as a connected system rather than separate programs. Investment is guided by industry-identified priorities. Research is distributed across the institutions best positioned to address those priorities. Findings are actively communicated back to the growers and stakeholders who made the investment possible. That cycle — not any single project or number — is what makes the collaborative approach sustainable over the long term.