THE KEYS TO PREPARING SUCCESSFUL RESEARCH GRANT PROPOSALS

This article seeks to demystify the competitive grant recommendation process of scientific peer review panels. The National Research Initiative Competitive Grants Program (NRICGP) administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Cooperative State Research, Extension, and Education Service (USDA-CSREES) serves as the focus of this article. This article provides a brief background on the NRICGP and discusses the application process, the scientific peer review process, guidelines for grant writing, and ways to interpret reviewer comments if a proposal is not funded. The essentials of good grant writing discussed in this article are transferable to other USDA competitive grant programs