Science Emphasis Areas (SEAs) are used by NIFA to develop, deliver and evaluate the agency's science objectives. SEAs help to ensure user-inspired research, education, and extension priorities remain the focus.
The nine Science Emphasis Areas are:
- Bioeconomy, Bioenergy, and Bioproducts
- Education
- Environmental Systems
- Family & Consumer Sciences
- Food Safety
- Human Nutrition
- Meteorology
- Sustainable Agricultural Production Systems
- Youth Development
The Agricultural Research, Education, and Extension Reform Act (AREERA) requires that recipients submit a Plan of Work (POW) and associated yearly results and annual report of accomplishments to receive federal funding. Recipient-defined critical issues are associated with NIFA SEAs to help organize and correlate recipient-defined issues with NIFA's science priorities. At least one SEA must be associated to each critical issue in the POW.
Knowledge Areas (KAs) are used to classify projects in REEport and the NIFA Reporting System (NRS). NIFA has mapped KAs to specific SEAs and uses this mapping to identify which NIFA research projects support each agency strategic goal and objective. Extension programs in NRS do not use KAs but may be associated with critical issues from the POW to align with NIFA’s SEAs. It is important to become familiar with what Knowledge Areas within NIFA's Manual of Classification are associated to each SEA to describe your research project or extension program during the initiation process.
This resource provides the Science Emphasis Area and Knowledge Area crosswalk information.
Please visit NIFA Reporting System (NRS) and REEport for more information about each reporting system.