Kansas State University has received a $13.7 million grant to help increase food supplies in Africa.

The five-year grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development will be used to establish the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Sorghum and Millet. Both crops are important in dry regions of Africa.

Associate agriculture economics professor Timothy Dalton will serve as the lab’s director and develop a research network.

The effort will involve universities, research centers, industries and non-governmental organizations. The network will work to improve the productivity, disease resistance, and value of sorghum and millet crops in Ethiopia, Senegal and Niger. Researchers also will help train scientists in those countries.

Dalton says the goal is to reduce poverty and hunger.