They have, and do. They aren’t set up for dealing with public, and it has been abused. Some repositories are more public-friendly than others.
I will say that even as someone with a nursery, some of my requests don’t get approved. I was trying to get strawberry cultivars which aren’t commercially available (so I could propagate them to make available to the public) and I had to request them three years in a row before getting them. I’m fairly certain that was entirely due to staffing limitations. They barely have enough staff to keep the facilities managed let alone distribute material. It would be nice if they got more funding so hopefully at some point that will happen.
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I suspect a combination of diminished capacity, as you describe, and increased demand, especially from novices.
Home gardening exploded during Covid shutdown, and awareness of grafting and home orchardry was already on uptick.
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Honestly it seemed to have it’s ups and downs with gardening so far. Things seemed to explode in 2020. I remember 2020 was when I first got interested to join this forum and in the 2020 to 2021 year I was looking for genetic dwarf peaches and nectarines but all had been sold out by New Years at places like One Green World, and places like Bay Laurel had stopped accepting orders by new years. Last year in the 2021-2022 ordering season we did not seem to have that many orders. I remember I could order stuff until May in some cases. The 2022-2023 season looks like there are some popular items selling out like hot cakes and other items seem to be in abundance. The Zaiger items like pluots, apriums, Weeping Santa Rosa plums etc. seem to be selling out quickly while your every day stuff seems to be selling out more slowly. The things that are selling out sold out within a week of ordering this year though. Like I remember I ordered 2 of each of Raintree’s 4 in 1 pluots. The Zee Sweet sold out first and the other pluot sold out in day 6 or 7. I think people started out getting everything first year, second year they ended up getting less or nothing and this year they are just getting more refined. I am curious how sells will happen next season. I think at this point many people who like me that have been ordering that last few seasons are getting maxed out.
Part of your ups, etc … are depending on the political party in office.
Part is a global pandemic that caused a panic (needlessly in my opinion).
Part is the stock market, housing market, etc. Those things affect people’s
responses to gardening, and many other choices.
If you want my opinion on how gardening plays into all those things I will say that it is too late if we are talking about edible gardening with perennials. Annuals are a net loss where I am unless we are talking about cold season plants like lettuce. Summer annuals take too much water to be profitable where I live. With edible fruit it will be 2-3 years before you see fruit in most cases (paw paw and persimmon take 6 years from what I hear and I have heard of other tropical fruit not fruiting long after 6 years) assuming it is perennial in most cases. In terms of edible nuts you will be waiting 3 years for hazelnuts and as long as 17 years for things like pecans. Political party will be changing near it’s next cycle by the time you get fruit on perennials and even if they change hands or not the system won’t change much in my experience. With the pandemic you need food now. In two years they created the vaccine so by the time fruit trees will have fruited you will be protected anyway. You will just not be protected from shortages which in that case you need the food at that point again. Not 3 years later. Stock Market and housing go up and down constantly. Besides if you own fruit trees chances are you have a house because you are not growing fruit trees on an apartment balcony. Maybe you can grow annuals on an apartment balcony but again annuals are a losing cause where I am cost wise. Somewhere more rainy annuals may be more affordable than fruit trees but here it is too dry for problems caused by rain.
I got pears from Corvallis a few years ago. I just told them I wanted to test the fireblight tolerance of them in my area. I got fdml, docteur deportes and a bunch of others. I told them that I was a member of this message board and a number of facebook groups and that I would share the information.
They sent me the scions no problem.
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Out of curiosity, how many people who’ve gotten material from them followed through and submitted your findings/results back to them at a later date?
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I think I’ve only done one, and it was solicited. Probably from Geneva.
I have a strong suspicion that if more of the home gardeners who previously requested material actually followed through with submitting their observations (such as climate specific performance reports) it would be a heck of a lot easier for them to seek the funding needed to allow for greater distribution. They can’t just ask for additional funding just because. They need data to justify funding requests.
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I am planning on submitting my observations for sure. I’m interested in fireblight resistance for my area but I will track many other parameters. The most important to me though is flavor quality and complexity
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I’ve found the process opaque in many ways. I have requested germplasm for breeding and there could be quite a wait for anything to report. On the other hand I would be sure to provide them with material for their collection if I thought it worth their time. But I don’t think they even have the staff to maintain their collections in some cases. It is entertaining to explore some of the listings if they have been made available online (data entry and managing the digital aspects is another time sink).
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I can tell you first hand that data management can take an incredible amount of time and effort for something that looks very simple.
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It’s good to provide them feedback along the way even if you haven’t yet reached your breeding goals. That data helps them justify their budget requests.