Organic Growers Seek More Crop Varieties

October 21

More than 200 organic seed farmers are growing 800 breeding lines of traditional crop plants in an effort to provide farmers and gardeners with a wide selection of crop varieties than they can obtain commercially. The effort is being conducted in conjunction with USDA's Agricultural Research Service.

The growers' program is known as the Farmer Cooperative Genome Project. The traditional crop plants are provided by the National Plant Germplasm System, maintained by ARS. One example of the program is that growers now work with 100 garlic lines provided by the Western Regional Plant Introduction Station in Pullman, WA, an ARS agency.

ARS also expects to benefit from the liaison as growers follow strict protocols and document crop characteristics for use by the germplasm system. Farmers also return some of the seed to ARS for storage and future use by researchers.

A network of 26 "repositories" is maintained nationwide by ARS that preserve and regenerate germplasm -- seed and other reproductive tissues -- of crops and their wild relatives. The system houses more than 400,000 accessions comprising more than 10,000 species. An accession is a genetically distinct group of plants such as a crop variety or wild subspecies.

More details on the project appear in the October issue of ARS' Agricultural Research magazine and on the Internet at http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/oct99/seed1099.htm.