Between June 2009 and October 2017 the Dahlem Centre of Plant Sciences was funded as a Focus Area at Freie Universität Berlin with a grant of the Excellence Initiative by the German federal and state governments.

Numerous groups of DCPS are member of the Collaborative Research Centre CRC 973 “Priming and Memory of Organismic Responses to Stress“, which is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). CRC 973 has been started in 2012 as a research platform initiated by the Freie Universität Berlin (FUB) (speaker university). Participating institutions are the University Potsdam (UP) and the Max-Planck-Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology (MPI-MP) in Potsdam-Golm.

Each of the reserach groups receives individual funding by different funding organisations, e.g. German Research Foundation (DFG), Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF), the European Union (EU) and others. Besides, members of the DCPS were and are participating in numerous joint projects:

 German Research Foundation (DFG)

• Collaborative Research Centre 973 (DFG) "Priming and Memory of Organismic Responses to Stress" (2012-2020)
• Forschergruppe 948 (DFG) "Nitrogen uptake, metabolism and remobilization in leaves during plant senescence" (2009-2015)
• Forschergruppe 964 (DFG) "Calcium signaling via protein phosphorylation in plant model
  cell types during environmental stress adaptation" (2008-2016)
• Schwerpunktprogramm 1212 (DFG) "Microbial reprogramming of plant cell development" (2006-2014)
• Schwerpunktprogramm 1374 (DFG) "Infrastructure Biodiversity Exploratories - Functional Biodiversity Research" (2006-2017)
• Schwerpunktprogramm 1530 (DFG) "Flowering Time Control - from natural variation to crop improvement" (2014-2017)

 Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF)

• PLANT-KBBE (BMBF, trinational) "Root enhancement for crop improvement" (2010-2014)
• PLANT-KBBE (BMBF) "SEEDS - Yield enhancement in oilseed rape" (2014-2018)
• PopMass (BMBF) "Development and use of novel gene technologies to increase biomass yield in the woody perennial Populus spec." (2012-2017)
• CROPTIMISE (BMBF) "Verbesserung der Trockentoleranz und Stickstoffverwertung durch kombinatorische genetische Transformation und 'multiple gene stacking'" (2011-2014)
• OPTIMASS (BMBF) "Options for sustainable geo-biosphere feedback management in savanna systems under regional and global change" (2014-2017)
• BIBS (BMBF) "Bridging in Biodiversity Science" (2017-2020)

European Union (EU)

• OpenUp! (EU Project, CIP) "Opening up the European Natural History Heritage for Europeana" (2011-2014)
• Pro-iBiosphere (EU Project, FP7 | 2012-2014)
• Bio Vel (EU Project, FP7) "Biodiversity Virtual e-Laboratory" (2011-2014)
• EU BON (EU Project, FP7) "Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network" ( 2012-2017)
• SYNTHESYS III (EU Project, FP7) "Synthesis of Systematic Resources" (2013-2017)
• EpiTRAITS (EU Project, ITN) "Epigenetic regulation of economically important plant traits" (2012-2016)

Additional Funding

• German-Chinese Junior Research Group (DAAD) "Improving nitrogen use efficiency of rice by biotechnological modification of urea uptake and metabolism" (2009-2014)
• "Developing Tools for Conserving the Plant Diversity of the Transcaucasus" (Volkswagenstiftung | 2011-2014)
• "Developing Tools for Conserving the Plant Diversity of the South Caucasus - Kaukasus 2" (Volkswagenstiftung | 2016-2018)
• Two PhD Scholarships in Plant Sciences at Freie Universität Berlin starting October 2016 (DAAD GSSP)