Curator and CGC Interactions: A Curator’s Perspective Gary Pederson USDA, 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 collections aren’t built in a day!