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MANAGING GLOBAL GENETIC RESOURCES: The U.S. National Plant Germplasm System
living or traveling abroad to send back seeds or plants of promising potential for new trees or crops (Hodge and Erlanson, 1956; Klose, 1950; White et al., 1989). John Quincy Adams, the sixth president, issued one such plea and similar requests came from Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and others.
From 1836 to 1862, before the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) was established, the U.S. Patent Commissioner's office sent seeds and plants of foreign origin to farmers throughout the United States. The idea was supported by several members of Congress through the use of their postal franking privileges. This activity ended in 1923 when seed distribution became the responsibility of the USDA. It had, by then, grown from a cost of $1,000 in 1839 to $360,000 in 1922 (just under 11 percent of the USDA budget at that time).
In 1898, the Seed and Plant Introduction Section, which later became the Plant Introduction Office, was established to promote the exploration
duced into the United States and given the designation PI 314817.
It was subsequently discovered that these plants were resistant to two serious diseases, peanut rust and late leafspot. Peanut rust is especially devastating to crops in Central and South America, Africa, and Asia, where the crop is an important staple. Although not generally a problem in the United States, the disease can in some years cause crop losses of up to 70 percent in peanuts grown in southern Texas. Leafspot is more common in the United States and can reduce yields as much as 50 percent.
The genes for resistance to these diseases have been successfully transferred from PI 314817 into a breeding line of peanuts known as Tifrust-14, that was released cooperatively by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, the University of Georgia, and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in India. This line has been distributed by the U.S. Department of State's Agency for International Development in Thailand and in the Philippines to promote development of advanced breeding lines with rust resistance and high yields. This has been a lengthy process, and only recently have rust and leafspot resistant peanut lines been released to farmers. Several south African nations, Thailand, and the Philippines are also planning to grow the resistant varieties. The delays result from the time it takes to breed and select the few desired genes—in this case for disease resistance— while discarding unacceptable traits, such as poor quality or low yield. This deliberate, sometimes tedious, process of enhancement is crucial to harvesting the benefits hidden in an accession of plant germplasm.
“GRIN Data” for the plant introduction (PI) number above represent informationcontained in the Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN).The narrative was prepared from information supplied by Johnny C.Wynne, Department of Crop Science, North Carolina State University.
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