Curator and CGC Interactions: A Curator’s Perspective

Gary PedersonUSDA, ARS, PGRCU

Griffin, GA

CGC experience• Clover plant breeder – 18 years• Early user of GRIN and plant genetic

resources• Requested 3,408 accessions

• Clover CGC member – 15 years• Clover CGC Chair – 3 years

• Attended three CGC Chairs meetings

NPGS experience• Research Leader – 9 years• Plant Genetic Resources Conservation

Unit, Griffin, GA

• Annual clover curator – 9 years• Sorghum coordinator – 9 years• Currently acting sorghum curator

• Acting Vigna curator – 3 years

NPGS experience• CGCs for Griffin collections

• Capsicum (pepper)• Clover and Special Purpose Legumes• Cucurbit• Forage and Turf Grass• New Crops• Peanut• Sorghum and Millet• Sweetpotato• Vigna (cowpea, mung bean)

NPGS experience• CGCs for Griffin collections

• Capsicum (pepper) (2)• Clover and Special Purpose Legumes (9) • Cucurbit (1)• Forage and Turf Grass (8)• New Crops (2)• Peanut (3)• Sorghum and Millet (9) • Sweetpotato (3)• Vigna (cowpea, mung bean) (4)

Expectations – Plant breeder and CGC member

• Large, genetically-diverse collection that contained all the variation that I needed.

• All accessions viable and available.• All accessions completely characterized

for all descriptors.• Viewed GRIN as a big spreadsheet with a lot of

holes that needed to be filled.

Realities – Research Leader and Curator

• Financial and physical resources limit the size of plant genetic resources collections.

• Germination testing and seed regeneration take labor, time, and money.

• Viability, availability, and backups are higher priorities than characterization/evaluation.

Realities – Everything takes money and labor

Number of federal employees at Griffin*Graph from NPGCC presentation by Peter Bretting (2010).

Sample GS-4 salary (x$1,000) at Griffin

Realities – Everything takes time

• If an action by one person takes one minute to complete for one accession:

• 60 accessions per hour• 480 accessions per day• 2,400 accessions per week• 37.8 weeks (8+ months) for all 90,668 accessions

at Griffin

Realities – Everything takes time

• Germination testing• Since 2002, 67% of accessions tested

• Deposit seed in -18 C for long-term storage• Since 2001, bulk of seed for 70% of accessions are

in -18 C storage

How can CGCs help?• Give advice (gaps in collection, acquisitions, duplicates)• Inform curator and RL of users’ concerns.• Provide characterization and evaluation data for GRIN

– once the data has been published.

• Provide information on use of plant genetic resources in publications and cultivar development.

• Suggest improvements to NPGS (collection, descriptors, GRIN, data).

Goals – Successful CGC/Curator Interaction• Develop and preserve excellent, useful plant genetic

resources collections.• Work together to improve plant genetic resources

collections.• Be persistent in making progress (it takes time!)

• Help get the collections to where they should be.• Look ahead to the future and future use of plant

genetic resources.

After all, great germplasm collectionsaren’t built in a day!