MINUTES OF THE WHEAT CROP GERMPLASM COMMITTEE
16 January, 2002.
Orlando, FL, USA.
Present: G. Brown-Guedira (USDA-ARS, Manhattan, KS; Acting chair),
K.G. Campbell (USDA-ARS, Pullman WA; Acting secretary), K.W. Simmons
(USDA-ARS-NPS), O. Anderson (USDA-ARS Albany CA; GrainGenes curator),
M. Bohning (USDA-ARS-PEO), Harold Bockelman (NPGS-NSGC; Curator),
Bent Skovmand (CIMMYT), Carl Griffey (Virginia Polytech Institute),
Dave Marshall (USDA-ARS, Raleigh, NC), Paul Murphy (North Carolina
State University), Dave Van Sanford (University of Kentucky),
Barton Fogelman (AgriPro Seeds, Berthoud, CO), Victoria Carollo
(USDA-ARS, Albany CA; GrainGenes), and John Moffat (AgriPro Seeds,
Berthoud, CO).
A review of the bylaws indicates that we are supposed to have 14 members. Recent resignations leave openings. The committee now stands with the following members: Gina Brown-Guedira, Kim Garland Campbell, John Moffat (or Barton Fogelman), Dave Marshall, Brian Stephanson, Bent Skovmand, Paul Murphy, and Carl Griffey, and ex. Officio members Kay Walker-Simmons, Harold Bockelman, Mark Bohning (or Alan Stoner), Olin Anderson, and Victoria Carillo.
One member is needed to represent state research programs in the west. Kim agreed to recruit a member from the Pacific Northwest. Canadian membership is difficult because they have no travel funding for this meeting. John Moffat agreed to contact Ken Richards in Canada to see if he would be willing to serve, otherwise the slot will be filled with a U.S. member.
Carl Griffey suggested that we stagger chair/vice-chair duties so that the chair serves a 3-year term and is replaced by the vice-chair. Gina indicated that assignment of the next chair and vice-chair would be determined through an E-mail ballot. (Note: Kim Garland Campbell was elected chair and Gina Brown-Guedira vice-chair).
Last year the program at Aberdeen received an increase in funding. Interviews have taken place for a new Research Leader. Construction planning is ongoing. Significant additions were made to the collection in 2001. The total collection is now about 54,000 Triticum accessions. One hundred eighteen accessions were added from Warren Kronstad's winter/spring crossing program at OSU. The Iranian collection from C. Qualset (over 7,000 accessions) has been assigned P.I. numbers and duplicated at CIMMYT. Iran is now the largest donor of germ plasm in the collection. Data is available for many of the accessions. The data is still being added to GRIN. Bent reported that CIMMYT helped regenerate the Iranian collection and evaluated it for resistance to RWA. That information will be shared with GRIN. The great majority of the accessions are facultative winter habit. Very few have resistance to leaf or yellow rust. Harold anticipates that resistance to common and dwarf bunt and salt tolerance also may be present. The Iranian collection should be available for those who are interested in it by spring 2002.
Discussions.
Letter from Jeff Dahlberg and the National Grain United Sorghum Producers Growers regarding the establishment of a new federal agency for germ plasm. Kay Walker-Simmons presented data indicating that the high priority placed on putting more resources into germ plasm efforts has been successful and that money has been consistently increasing for the past 3 years. Kay reported that the budget for the NPGS for 1997 was $20 million. After steady budget increases for a period of 4 years, the 2001 budget for the NPGS was USD $32.1 million. An additional increase of USD $3.9 million is estimated for the 2002 budget. New resources also were to have been added to the Griffin, GA, site and to Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, specifically for sorghum. Paul indicated that the letter cited 1981 and 1991 reports critical of the NPGS with the implication that nothing had been done since then but the increased funding within the last 5 years contradicted that assumption. Carl stated that there was an additional need for characterization of germ plasm. Kay stated that NSF and the USDA were working together to ensure that new data coming from Plant Genome grants was available to the NPGS. Germ plasm also was being expanded to include beneficial microbes and some animals. The name of the National Seed Storage Laboratory in Ft. Collins has been changed to the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation to reflect this broader mission. Security was being increased for the collections. Bent indicated that the U.S., the NPGS was one of the best. The consensus of the Wheat CGC was that given the documented increases in funding for the NPGS, we should not recognize the problems stated by the NGSP without further explanation. The wheat CGC feels that the system functions well as it is. The current system of managing the NPGS within ARS actually helps it to function by linking genetic resources to research programs involved in germ plasm enhancement and utilization. This provides a direct link to growers who are the ultimate beneficiaries. Therefore, the committee can not support the proposal put forth by the NGSP at this time.
Carl asked about the current status of the Vavilov collection. Bent and Harold suspect that they are still struggling along. ICARDA is working with the Vavilov collection. No action was taken.
Bent reported that the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture was adopted by the FAO Conference on 3 November, 2001. The U.S. and Japan did not sign. Kay reported that the opinion of the U.S. State Department was that provisions of the agreement violated U.S. Patent law, therefore, the U.S. could not sign for private companies but could sign only for the public sector. The text of the undertaking can be accessed through http://www.fao.org/ag/cgrfa/IU.htm. Bent reported that the international centers are not sure about the whole meaning of the undertaking. CIMMYT will probably keep it's 'designated' and 'nondesignated' germ plasm classifications but other aspects of germ plasm exchange are unclear. One concern for germ plasm sites is that sample tracking may be required for compensation.
Collection trips for wheat. Gina stated that there has not been a NPGS funded collection trip of Triticeae for over 10 years. The committee needs to recommend areas for collection. Harold reported that Ned Garvey at the Plant Exploration Office, negotiated an agreement with ICARDA involving Armenia and Uzbekistan where opportunities will arise to participate in or obtain material from collecting trips. In the past year, they collected in Armenia including Aegilops. Gina has a collaborator who collected in Tajikistan and sent 120 accessions including 40 Ae. tauschii, some Ae. cylindrica, Ae. triuncialis, and T. aestivum land races. Bent recommended that collections be made in the former Soviet Republics, the Hill country of Nepal and T. aestivum, Hordeum, and Secale in Tibet if someone knows how to get in. Aegilops species in Mongolia, Manchuria, and China would also be useful as well as in North Korea if anything is left. Harold recommended that we pursue the ICARDA agreement. Kim agreed to contact R. Hanna and the NPGS-Western Plant Introduction Center in Pullman for further details.
Revision of the Wheat CGC report. Steve Jones revised the introduction. The rest of the sections were divided as follows:
Collection evaluation. Harold noted that if proposals were put forward for new trait evaluation in the germ plasm bank, he would consider it. The funds for germ plasm evaluation are held by the R.L. at Aberdeen.
Much discussion ensued regarding evaluation of specific traits. Some of the traits mentioned were resistance to Karnal bunt, root rots, S. tritici, St. nodorum, adult plant leaf rust (latent period evaluation), BYDV, salt and drought tolerance, protein, texture, seed color, waxy alleles, polyphenol oxidase, and molecular markers for Lr12, Lr13, and Lr34.
GRIN, Mark discussed improvements to GRIN. A new system release for plant curators will be available in May 2002. Improvements to the public interface will be made after that. Some of the improvements will include better downloading of information, a spreadsheet view of data, a shopping cart for selected accessions, and better navigation. The passport data for wheat is very good compared to other plants. GRIN now includes insects and animals. Harold has been adding images of spike and seeds for accession identification purposes. Kim and Gina asked if the information in release and/or registration notices could be better integrated into GRIN. Crop registration notices published in Crop Science are copyrighted so they can not be directly copied into GRIN. Dave Marshall agreed to ask if direct links to registration articles could be established from GRIN.
Distribution of germ plasm protected by international property rights. John reported that anything registered in Crop Science is available for distribution worldwide. The USDA has formed a committee that is not very active right now. John spoke with Ken Richards in Canada who indicated that they are watching the U.S. to see what policy develops. Harold commented that distribution of IPR-protected materials occurs only if the owners volunteer the material to be distributed. As Stan Cox commented in 1996, 'Germ plasm exchange has floundered on the shoals of IPR.' Discussion occurred regarding the role of the committee in this issue. Harold stated that although the NSGC has material with plant variety protection, nothing has been accepted with proprietary traits. Kay mentioned that the ARS wants to encourage freedom to operate. An agreement was reached for maize with the coöperators of the GEM (Germ plasm Enhancement of Maize) project in which cooperators crossing with the materials agree to return progeny to the originator. USDA-ARS-NPS will not obtain utility patents of research and will not work with 'reach-throughs'. Materials will be provided freely. Soybean and wheat regional nurseries do contain genotypes with proprietary traits and coöperators are required to select away from the trait or obtain agreements with the owner if they make crosses with the material. In his 1996 report, Stan Cox encouraged reestablishment of international germ plasm nurseries and funding to support that.
Gina pointed out the material transfer agreements exist for molecular markers in wheat, particularly those developed by researchers at Gaterslaben, Germany, which are being patented. When using markers for cultivar development and/or proposing cultivar release, it is wise to negotiate in advance.
Olin reported on the status of the wheat EST project. There are now over 75,000 wheat ESTs. The goal is to reach 115,000 and then swap collections with others such as Japan. Mapping of ESTs onto the wheat deletion stocks is ongoing. People have started to mine the mapping and EST data. J. Dvorak is P.I. on a project to obtain a physical map of the D genome and hybridize mapped ESTs from the first project to align the BACs with the deletion map.
GrainGenes report. Dave Matthews works with the database. Victoria works with the Web site. Mirror sites exist in Europe (2) and Japan (1), and a future site at CIMMYT. A new home page for GrainGenes has been developed and users can search the website. New features include additional links, hot topics, employment, archived copies of the Annual Wheat Newsletter, 8,000 references, and interactive maps. Sequence data is also available for 60,000 ESTs and links to TIGR are available. The gopher (text) files are being converted into HTML files. Database files are being constructed using both object-oriented and relational-database methods.
Olin noted that with a change in direction of USDA-ARS bioinformatics, an oversight committee is needed for GrainGenes. The consensus of the committee was that GrainGenes was an important resource and an oversight committee was necessary to provide direction. A member representing the Wheat CGC should serve on the oversight committee.
Meeting dates and locations.
A decision was made to meet in the future with the NWIC. The NWIC will be meeting in Cincinnati following the National FHB Forum. The Wheat CGC will meet on the Monday following the FHB forum at 1 p.m.