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Two areas vital to the Nation’s energy and environmental security motivate the BER research agenda: developing cost-effective biofuels and bioproducts and improving our ability to understand, predict, and mitigate the impacts of energy production in the face of a variable environment. BER has invested in plant and plant-microbe interactions research with the goal of advancing production of biofuels/bioproducts from domestic lignocellulosic and oilseed crop sources. These efforts have increased our understanding of the biological mechanisms underlying feedstock productivity and facilitated development of next- generation bioenergy crops that utilize novel, efficient bioenergy strategies that can be replicated on a mass scale. However, several knowledge gaps and challenges remain towards attaining the goal of developing vigorous crops with superior growth and yield under varying environmental conditions. A better understanding of the underlying genetic and physiological mechanisms influencing plant productivity, resource use efficiency, and adaptation and resilience to abiotic stress are needed. Also of interest is how beneficial plant-microbe associations may enhance requisite plant processes to enable manipulation of these associations for improving plant traits. Furthermore, available computational technologies and infrastructure may provide opportunities to connect and integrate information across multiple spatial and temporal scales to better understand the behavior of complex biological systems and to develop a predictive understanding of sustainability outcomes over a range of future climate scenarios [U.S. DOE.2014. Research for Sustainable Bioenergy: Linking Genomic and Ecosystem Sciences, Workshop Report, DOE/SC-0167. U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science. https://www.genomicscience.energy.gov/research-for-sustainable-bioenergy-linking-genomic-and-ecosystem-sciences/]. DOE-BER’s GSP (https://genomicscience.energy.gov/) supports fundamental research

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