Objective:
To help strengthen the cooperation between the Participants and promote international bioengagement and biological threat reduction, in accordance with the Participants’ core missions.

Approach:
DOS provides funding to ARS for the purposes of implementing two biological threat reduction programs: The ARS Former Soviet Union Scientific Cooperation Program (“FSU Program”) and the Biosecurity Engagement Program (“BEP”). In 1998, with funds from DOS, ARS initiated a program designed to provide opportunities for scientific cooperation between ARS scientists and scientists in research institutes of the former Soviet Union (FSU) countries. The objectives of the FSU program are to: • Advance agricultural science by establishing new expertise in FSU countries • Enhance the effectiveness and productivity of ARS research programs • Improve the economy of FSU countries through advances in agricultural technology • Reduce the threat of biological and chemical weapons development and usage in the world ARS accomplishes these goals by establishing collaborative, mutually beneficial research projects, whose proposals are developed jointly between principal investigators from ARS and the FSU; maintaining substantial contact between ARS and FSU scientists; and optimizing the collaboration at the scientist level and sharing success between the ARS and FSU laboratories.