The US Department of Agriculture said that it would double the funding next year for its National Research Initiative (NRI), to $240 million.

Unlike most research spending by the agriculture department, NRI grants are competitively peer-reviewed, making the programme popular with plant geneticists and other university researchers.

The rest of the agriculture department's research and development programmes would be cut back from $2.3 billion this year to $2.1 billion. But the department proposes small increases in funding for research into bovine spongiform encephalopathy and foot-and-mouth disease.