Food-Water Interface
Supporting interdisciplinary research where emerging plant diseases or global food security intersect with water, sanitation, and health.
Food and water are interconnected resources. More than 70% of the world’s freshwater withdrawals are currently used for agriculture, and agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides can be major contributors to non-point source water pollution. Floods and droughts can impact the spread of water-borne pathogens in humans and livestock, with implications for food production and safety. Yet in addition to these challenges, there lies tremendous potential for innovation that bridges the food-water nexus for societal benefit, such as technology that enables bioremediating crops or safe reuse of wastewater in agricultural irrigation. These challenges and opportunities require close collaboration between experts in agriculture, water and sanitation, and public health under the One Health framework.
The Grand Challenges Addressing Program on the Food-Water Interface (GCAP-FWI) will facilitate these necessary collaborations. GCAP-FWI catalyzes NC State’s disciplinarily diverse strengths in emerging plant diseases, global food security, and global water, sanitation, and hygiene. Focal areas of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Reuse of wastewater and wastewater-derived biosolids for agriculture and agricultural water for other purposes
- Optimizing surveillance of water for plant pathogens or plant health-relevant antimicrobial resistance
- Real-time and sensor-based decision support systems at the plant-water nexus
- Novel technologies for phytoremediation of contaminants in water and combatting agriculture-related biogeochemical fluxes or eutrophication
- Impacts of climate change and water-related extreme events on agriculture and plant health
Supporting and Integrating Faculty Clusters
GOHA supports two Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program (CFEP) Clusters – the Emerging Plant Disease and Global Food Security Cluster, led by Anna Whitfield, and the Global Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Cluster, led by Francis de los Reyes. GCAP-FWI grew out of a desire to integrate the efforts of these two clusters, leveraging each group’s strengths and resources to drive forward research and innovation to address global grand challenges in the interconnected food-water space. GOHA hosted multiple workshops to bring together the faculty affiliated with these clusters and additional faculty from across the university with relevant interest/expertise to begin synergizing efforts. These workshops informed GCAP-FWI through identification of food-water interface priority areas where NC State can lead innovative science for real-world impact.
Working Group on Cyanotoxin Reference Points
In collaboration with the NC State Center for Marine Sciences and Technology (CMAST), GOHA supports a working group, co-led by Tal Ben-Horin and Astrid Schnetzer, centered on establishing reference points for cyanotoxin contamination in seafood. Cyanobacteria are a common source of harmful algal blooms in freshwater systems, and the toxins they produce can pose significant risks to aquatic organisms, wildlife, and human health. These toxins are environmentally persistent and can accumulate in fish and shellfish across estuary ecosystems. It is therefore crucial to understand cyanotoxin distribution across a continuum of freshwater to estuarine and marine environments, particularly in fished species that are commonly consumed by humans.
Establishing reference values for baseline toxin concentrations represents an area of high need for both research and regulatory guidance, and demands a One Health approach. Products of the working group will be framed to provide natural resource managers and public health agencies with reliable reference points to monitor toxin levels and manage risks. Synthesis will also explore how regional factors, such as estuary size and surrounding land use, influence toxin accumulation, helping managers to predict and mitigate the impact of cyanobacterial blooms on aquatic food sources. The ultimate goal of the working group is to enable more informed seafood safety decision-making for natural resource management and public health.
GCAP-FWI Seed Grants
The Global One Health Academy offered seed grants in Fall 2025 to accelerate interdisciplinary FWI research grounded in the One Health framework. Two funding types were available: Launch Projects of up to $50,000 to support more advanced-stage projects likely to lead to external grant submission within a short time window, and Pilot Projects of up to $15,000 to support more nascent collaborations and/or new research directions. Three projects were funded through this seed grant call.
Launch Project
- Fungi in Wastewater: Harnessing Bioremediation of Micropollutants to Support Sustainable Crop Irrigation
- PIs: Francis de los Reyes (COE), Michael Bradshaw (CALS), and Tarek Aziz (COE)
Pilot Projects
- Rapid Field-Deployable Biosensor for Detecting Fecal Contamination in Fresh Produce Production Environments
- PIs: Deepti Salvi (CALS) and Michael Daniele (COE)
- Connected Superbugs: Exploring the Design Space of an Interactive Game Modeling Systemic Antimicrobial Resistance Dynamics
- PIs: Aditi Mallavarapu (COE), Katie Sanders (CALS), Min Chi (COE), and Arnav Jhala (COE)
