That’s what I’m advocating. Perhaps we should start a thread or topic about what folks have been able to get in their own collections so whomever has opportunities to collect can focus on gaps they see.
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Partly true. Partly false. I don’t expect Monsanto to pick up where USDA leaves off. That said I do expect many collectors and small nurseries would be happy to. We have a zillion nonprofits in this country, many of which are proof people can organize without a profit motive
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“Federal income tax in the United States officially started in 1913 with the ratification of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution.” We dont want to make this political, and we won’t. I’m pointing out that even though most people i know work for the government, there are justifications for what is being done. I also want to point out this is a very valuable post thee OP made because i think an overreaction is also very bad. We dont want to throw out the valuable baby with the dirty bathwater. Scions have been hard for many to get though their tax dollars funded the research. We will find a little pity from them. Those of us with farms and doing research had access to scions once a year. I would love to see a more open scion program come from this. Corvalis has been a valuable resource to the public. If i were in their shoes i would open scions to all the public. The public would rally on their side if a problem came up. As a state government employee myself i can tell you the public is my boss. I wished everyone realized that. My prayers are with the op and their family who will likely be working soon in the private sector. This is the problem with a single point of failure. We will write to our state officials to try to convert the agency to a state facility if we know the details. The feds will cut resources there is no changing that.
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Very true. That’s why it is so frustrating when access to material, including seeds, is denied,
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Did you get Aronia seed or cuttings?
I can’t find the post you are talking about. Can you point me towards that post?
I have no idea where you get the 90% number from. But it smell’s like bovine excrement.
The problem is, that testing for certain traits is relatively expensive. And we don’t know what new disease or virus etc will hurt crops in the future. So it’s impossible to test the germplasms for those traits now. That’s why they focus on large genetic diversity instead of certain traits. This has been explained by a previous poster.
Keeping 90% of the benefits. Would require keeping roughly 90% of the germplasm. A lot of really smart people work at germplasms. If there was an easy way to reduce costs and keep the benefits. They would have done it.
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you don’t seem to have a basic grasp on what germplasm do or how they work. So excuse me for not trusting you on on the “little rain” analogy. Maybe educate yourself before proclaiming “all is fine”
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I think youre right, access should be open to the public. Charge market value for scions. That could certainly help offset the cost of the program. More people using the sstem also means more copies in case one is lost. I know Id certainly like to try some of the apples in the geneva collections. They have a lot of Malus sieverseii specimens that could be interesting. Would also like to play around with the Bud 490 rootstock.
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To this point, one of the USDA locations mistakenly sent me scion for a Ribes species I had not requested because it had seeded in to the clump of the variety I had requested. I would have never considered growing this species of Ribes (which I have tentatively identified as R. curvatum), and although it’s unfortunate the collection was not staffed fully enough to keep rogue seedlings weeded out (so they don’t smother the original accessions), it was ultimately good they had that species in their collection. If you were to look at the plant I grew from this scion you might see an under-performing gooseberry with low fruit set and tiny fruit which is hardly worth picking. The average fruit enthusiast would not try to save this species when scouring the USDA collection on foot in search of gooseberries to save. However, I’ve found that in my location this species (or at least this clone of this species) has an exceptionally high resistance to defoliation from saw fly larvae despite high pressure from this pest on all other cultivated gooseberry varieties I have grown. Now, I’m using it in breeding with hopes to retain the saw fly resistance it has, but combine it with larger fruit on more productive plants.
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These are the kind of stories that elected officials need to hear.
The one I referenced as having fruited already was from cuttings. The one which has not yet fruited was from seed. However, the seed sourced one was also tetraploid which for Aronia means will mostly be clonal with a small percentage of variable seedlings possible. Therefor with that one I have retained multiple seedlings so I can evaluate them long enough to weed out any potential off type seedling(s) and ensure that what I have left is true to type for what they were supposed to be.
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We will never know if it was staffing or incompetence.
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Both can be true. With such limited staffing, there are not many people present to train new hires when older curators retire. This means that even if good people are hired, they’re put in a position to under-perform since they have to relearn so much with insufficient guidance.
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