Federal Budget vs. GRIN Repository?

[Solanum315]

Just wondering if anyone has some insight into whether or not the repositories are safe in the current economic climate.

As a side note, I was taking my dog to Cornell and got to look into some of the greenhouses. There didn't seem to be that much preventing cross pollination, especially of wind pollinated varieties. However, since they seemed to be dedicating separate rooms for varieties, the tomatoes probably self pollinate most of the time.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Solanum315

Just wondering if anyone has some insight into whether or not the repositories are safe in the current economic climate.

As a side note, I was taking my dog to Cornell and got to look into some of the greenhouses. There didn't seem to be that much preventing cross pollination, especially of wind pollinated varieties. However, since they seemed to be dedicating separate rooms for varieties, the tomatoes probably self pollinate most of the time.

I've see no info about that at all. As to Svalbard, I think that's fine,the backup for the several USDA stations is in Fort Collins. CO and should be OK,backup for SSE stuff is also at Fort Collins, but as to the individual USDA locations in many parts of the country,that's a good question since the USDA is under the Dept of Agriculture who fund them , and I'm not going to get political about what might happen.

Same for the USDA GRIN site, I haven't a clue.

Carolyn

[Worth1]

Assuming the vaults are there for some sort of big time disaster they better be thinking about preserving some of our older ways of doing things.
And the people that know how to do them and keep passing it down generation after generation.
If not the survivors are going to find themselves in a world they have no idea how to live in.

Worth

[PhilaGardener]

I don't think any thing is safe at the moment . . .

[Solanum315]

I don't think that the GRIN repositories were designed as a response to disaster. However, I do think that it would be a good thing if more people maintained GRIN varieties in case their budget got slashed so that we do not lose those lesser known varieties.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Solanum315

I don't think that the GRIN repositories were designed as a response to disaster. However, I do think that it would be a good thing if more people maintained GRIN varieties in case their budget got slashed so that we do not lose those lesser known varieties.

Here's the problem with GRIN and tomatoes.

The USDA station at Geneva,NY was the one that had responsibility for tomatoes. When it was still possible to get varieties out of GRIN, Craig L and I did so, grew them out and SSE listed all of them to make them available to others.

But GRIN also has mostly outdated breeding accessions that will never be used again, and are useless.The person who was the head at Geneva,I forgot his name now, asked the feds for more money to have someone go through the list and delete that which would never be used again,

He asked Craig L, nctomatoman here, Kent Wheley, then head of SSE who knew nothing about tomatoes, and myself to do that. But he didn't get the money, no, not to pay us, not at all,but to help with growouts at Geneva.At the time they had no distances between varieties in the field,no nothing to help prevent X pollination.

Some of the seeds we were sent were DOA but and some had very low germination and there were some that were very important, this one, which was on the cover of the 1900 Livingston seed catalog.

http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Magnus

Craig and I were pretty confident that we got out all that was important, and back then,as SSE members we were sent money for every new variety we listed,we sent back the money. So all of those should still be in the SSE gene bank,if you will.

Carolyn, who forgot to say that there was another person in Canada who also was getting stuff out of GRIN and SSE listing it.But his main interest was potatoes,which he got at another USDA station,I don't remember which one that was.

[Solanum315]

I pulled most if not all of the Filipino varieties about five years ago due to my interest in that country and it's agriculture. Some did appear to be either crossed or landrace which makes sense because I do not think that most grow operations in the third world pay much if any attention to segregation of seed stock. The majority of my growouts did match the text descriptions in the database as well as the available photos. Although I originally acquired the seeds for breeding, now I feel a sort of responsibility to maintain the varieties themselves kind of like the book people in Fahrenheit 451. I am happy to see that Double Helix offers two varieties on their website but in general, I think we stand to lose a lot of good varieties due to lack of interest. I would say that less than half of my GRIN growouts were notably good tomatoes but I count at least two as within my top ten varieties and neither of those two are readily available elsewhere. I suppose there is an element of a tree falling in the forest if unknown varieties are lost. :/

I saw a lot of tomatoes being grown in the greenhouses right next to Cornell Vet School. Are these not affiliated with GRIN?

[Worth1]

Of that 1.11 trillion dollars 1% or 13.1 billion was spent on food and agriculture.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Solanum315

I don't think that the GRIN repositories were designed as a response to disaster. However, I do think that it would be a good thing if more people maintained GRIN varieties in case their budget got slashed so that we do not lose those lesser known varieties.

Correct,only the Svalbard one, aka the dooms day vault was designed for that.

Carolyn

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Solanum315

I pulled most if not all of the Filipino varieties about five years ago due to my interest in that country and it's agriculture. Some did appear to be either crossed or landrace which makes sense because I do not think that most grow operations in the third world pay much if any attention to segregation of seed stock. The majority of my growouts did match the text descriptions in the database as well as the available photos. Although I originally acquired the seeds for breeding, now I feel a sort of responsibility to maintain the varieties themselves kind of like the book people in Fahrenheit 451. I am happy to see that Double Helix offers two varieties on their website but in general, I think we stand to lose a lot of good varieties due to lack of interest. I would say that less than half of my GRIN growouts were notably good tomatoes but I count at least two as within my top ten varieties and neither of those two are readily available elsewhere. I suppose there is an element of a tree falling in the forest if unknown varieties are lost. :/

I saw a lot of tomatoes being grown in the greenhouses right next to Cornell Vet School. Are these not affiliated with GRIN?

Yes,the ones grown in the Phillipines were always of interest since when the Spanish brought back seeds from Mexico they distributed them along their trading routes, and some maintained that the so called black ones first came from there. I grew several of them and they certainly were landraces, you never knew what you'd get and they didn't taste very good either.

If I had time I know I could try to pull up some of threads that are here about that, but I don't have the time right now..

I also knew the Vet School very well, and at least when I was there we Microbiology majors had to make the long trek to the Vet School to take certain courses. We sat with the Vet students and they could be called out ASAP to watch an autopsy being done, required for them,but we were welcome to go and watch and we did on several occasions.

I was at Cornell from 1961 and graduated 4 years later and I never saw any greenhouses with Grin varieties growing there at that time. Why would they?

Although the USDA Geneva station wasn't that far away from there and I wonder why Cornell was growing GRIN varieties there at that time. Yes, I know that Grin varieties are not the same as the varieties that were grown at the various USDA stations to maintain fresh seeds.

Carolyn

[carolyn137]

[QUOTE=carolyn137;626596]Yes,the ones grown in the Phillipines were always of interest since when the Spanish brought back seeds from Mexico they distributed them along their trading routes, and some maintained that the so called black ones first came from there. I grew several of them and they certainly were landraces, you never knew what you'd get and they didn't taste very good either.

If I had time I know I could try to pull up some of threads that are here about that, but I don't have the time right now..

I also knew the Vet School very well, and at least when I was there we Microbiology majors had to make the long trek to the Vet School to take certain courses. We sat with the Vet students and they could be called out ASAP to watch an autopsy being done, required for them,but we were welcome to go and watch and we did on several occasions.

I was at Cornell from 1961 and graduated 4 years later and I never saw any greenhouses with Grin varieties growing there at that time. Why would they?

Although the USDA Geneva station wasn't that far away from there and I wonder why Cornell was growing GRIN varieties there at that time. Yes, I know that Grin varieties were not always the same as the varieties that were grown at the various USDA stations to maintain fresh seeds.

Carolyn

[Worth1]

Now this bugs the devil out of me.
The GDP of the US 2016 was 75,212,696, in a chart it says that we spend about 3.3 % of the GDP on the military.
Yet our spending is right at 600 billion.
Where on earth is that money coming from.
How do they get these figures?
Could it be almost 20 trillion dollars in dept.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...mjwFAUf9Z8wd7Q