There is an effort to encourage retiring scientists to submit important or rare materials for entry into NPGS. In particular, the curator, Stephanie Greene, has been working with Royce Murphy to enter valuable materials form his collection. Also, twenty Trifolium PI’s not previously in NPGS have been entered from Norm Taylor’s collection.

Recent efforts of Dr. Greene, have focused on updating records and passport information on the accessions. The committee has recommended that evaluation data determined from open pollinated seed of PI’s be discarded. Stephanie has reported that the PI records have now been largely updated and she is ready to move to the next step. We are hopeful that these records can be used to aid in the identification of gaps and weaknesses in the collection.

A GRIN user guide will be available in the near future. A review of the requests shows that 50% of the requests come from US Universities for the purpose of basic research. Thirteen percent of the requests are for the annual species. These requests are for both basic research and plant breeding. In the recent past there has been a drop-off in requests for alfalfa PI’s. It is likely that this is due to the loss of funds for germplasm evaluation finds. Details of this information are presented in Dr. Greene's written report (Attached #2). Information is also available on request by Taxa.

New Position at Prosseer:

George Vandemark is new to the team at Prosser and will fill a position based on Richard Peaden's position. Dr. Vandemark's specialties are soil borne pathogens and molecular markers. A major component of his position will be germplasm enhancement.

Walt Graves is nearing completion of the increases and evaluation of annual medics. It is expected that this will be his last year on ACGC. Stephanie Greene expects that the thresher funded by ACGC will be transferred to Prosser. She will follow up on that in a communication with Walt Graves.

A one-page document is now available describing access to the GRIN system (Attached #3).

Jim Elgin has retired from NPS the latest word is that fill Jim’s old position will be refilled.

Peter Bretting has been transferred from Ames to Beltsville. The position He held at Ames will be refilled.

Allan emphasized the importance of the annual reports from the CGC's. They contain the priorities of the committee and therefore the species. The most revision of the this report for ACGC was written in 1996.

Allan reported on the recent report on CGC's by the General Accounting Office (GAO). A questioner containing 144 questions was sent to CGC members. Reports were then developed for each of 56 CGC's, but the general summary does not summarize by commodity. Among all committees the top priority was acquisition. Priorities for Alfalfa and a few of the other commodities deviated significantly from the norm. The top priority for alfalfa was enhancement. Teuber ask if alfalfa could be penalized in any future funding because its needs were different. Alan initially responded that he didn't think it would be a problem. He later reconsidered and said that he could see how some might argue that priority funding should go to commodities still needing to acquire genetic materials. It would therefore be even more important to have our priorities and plans for achieving those priorities well thought out and documented.

There is an initiative sponsored by the American Seed Trade Association to double the funding for National Plant Germplasm System by the year 2002. To move this initiative forward ASTA will assess itself $50,000 in each of the next two years and will also assess its members an additional $50,000 in each of the next two years to get the necessary legislation. Ingrsol Associates have been hired to develop a plan and to see it through legislation.

To position itself for the anticipated increase in funding, the ACGC is being encouraged to review its 1996 statement of priorities and to have a plan in place showing how it will address those priorities. A subcommittee of Volenec (chair), Teuber, Greene, Bouton, and McCaslin will revise and present a comprehensive collection, evaluation, and enhancement plan to the Committee for approval at the 1999 meeting. If this initiative is successful we could expect something in the order of $900,000 augmentation to the Western Plant Introduction Station at Pullman. These resources would be applied to evaluation, aqusition, enhancement, and maintenance. If properly positioned alfalfa could expect to receive some major funding.

Eighteen committee members (8 University, 5 seed companies, 4 USDA) responded to the questioner (Attachment 4). The general impression of the respondents was that alfalfa is not genetically vulnerable, but there is a need to increase the diversity in some areas. Funding has been adequate but it could be increased (this is a question that could be misleading because alfalfa had evaluation funds until very recently). Evaluation of germplasm is the highest priority, but that is somewhat dependent on the trait(s) considered. Pest resistance is in general ok, quality is mixed but generally ok, new applications and production traits are also mixed, but skewed toward insufficient information. More evaluation data are needed for several traits including molecular characterization and heterosis. There is very definitely too little work that has been done on "pre-breeding".

A discussion followed regarding what constitutes pre-breeding / enhancement. The general thesis is that it is necessary to increase the immediate utility of the genetic materials in NPGS, but the methods we use to accomplish this should make a priority of maintaining the integrity of sources that may provide heterotic combinations.

As part of it's assignment the sub-committee reviewing the ACGC report needs to review and incorporate the plan for germplasm enhancement developed by Don Viands. They may also wish to reassess the plan for regional pools developed by Barnes etal. (USDA Technical Bulletin No. 1571).

Meeting adjourned 6:08 pm

Respectfully Submitted

Larry R. Teuber

Secretary

Attachments:

1. Membership list with addresses and telephone numbers
2. Curators Report
3. The GRIN System
4. GAO questioner for ACGC

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