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National Plant Germplasm System
The U.S. National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS) is a network of institutions and agencies (federal, state and private) led by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the effort to conserve and facilitate the use of the genetic diversity of agriculturally important plants and their wild relatives. Introduction Tremendous genetic variability exists in the local varieties (landraces) of crops and their closely related wild plants (crop wild relatives). The NPGS assists plant breeders and other research scientists by acquiring, conserving, evaluating, documenting, and distributing germplasm (seeds and other propagative material) of these plants, as well as of improved cultivars and breeding lines. This diverse germplasm provides the genetic raw material needed by plant breeders to develop new varieties of crops that have desirable qualities and can withstand constantly changing biological and environmental stresses. Conservation and use of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agricultural Research Service
The Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is the principal in-house research agency of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). ARS is one of four agencies in USDA's Research, Education and Economics mission area. ARS is charged with extending the nation's scientific knowledge and solving agricultural problems through its four national program areas: nutrition, food safety and quality; animal production and protection; natural resources and sustainable agricultural systems; and crop production and protection. ARS research focuses on solving problems affecting Americans every day. The ARS Headquarters is located in the Jamie L. Whitten Building on Independence Avenue in Washington, D.C. and the headquarters staff is located at the George Washington Carver Center (GWCC) in Beltsville, Maryland. For 2018, its budget was $1.2 billion. Mission ARS conducts scientific research for the American public. Their main focus is on research to develop solutions to agricultural pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Niels Ebbesen Hansen
Niels Ebbesen Hansen (January 4, 1866 – October 5, 1950) was a Danish-American horticulturist, botanist, and agricultural explorer for the United States Department of Agriculture and the state of South Dakota. He searched the harsh environments of northern Scandinavia, Siberia, Manchuria, and the dry steppes of the Volga for plant stock that could flourish on the upper Great Plains. Biography Niels Ebbesen Hansen was born the youngest of three children in Lustrupholm, Denmark, a small farm, in Ribe County, Denmark. He was the son of Danish-born muralist Andreas Hansen and Bodil Midtgaard. Hansen's mother died when he was a year and a half old. His father married Katrine Petersen two years later. Andreas Hansen emigrated to the United States in 1872 and sent for Katrine and Niels the following year. In 1876, the family moved to Des Moines, Iowa. Hansen left high school at the beginning of his junior year to work as a messenger for Iowa Secretary of State John A.T. Hull. He s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States National Agricultural Library
The United States National Agricultural Library (NAL) is one of the world's largest agricultural research libraries, and serves as a national library of the United States and as the library of the United States Department of Agriculture. Located in Beltsville, Maryland, it is one of five national libraries of the United States (along with the Library of Congress, the National Library of Medicine, the National Transportation Library, and the National Library of Education). It is also the coordinator for the Agriculture Network Information Center (AgNIC), a national network of state land-grant institutions and coordinator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) field libraries. NAL was established on May 15, 1862, by the signing of the Organic Act by Abraham Lincoln. It served as a departmental library until 1962, when the Secretary of Agriculture officially designated it as the National Agricultural Library. The first librarian, appointed in 1867, was Aaron B. Grosh, one ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Germplasm Resources Information Network
Germplasm Resources Information Network or GRIN is an online USDA National Genetic Resources Program software project to comprehensively manage the computer database for the holdings of all plant germplasm collected by the National Plant Germplasm System. GRIN has extended its role to manage information on the germplasm reposits of insect (invertebrate), microbial, and animal species (see sub-projects). Description The site is a resource for identifying taxonomic information (scientific names) as well as common names on more than 500,000 accessions (distinct varieties, cultivars etc.) of plants covering 10,000 species; It gives 450,000 accessions (outdated; GRIN gives 500,000 as of June 2012). both economically important ones and wild species. It profiles plants that are invasive or noxious weeds, threatened or endangered, giving out data on worldwide distribution of its habitat; as well as passport information. GRIN also incorporates an Economic Plants Database. The network ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Svalbard Global Seed Vault
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault ( no, Svalbard globale frøhvelv) is a secure backup facility for the world's crop diversity on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago. The Seed Vault provides long-term storage of duplicates of seeds conserved in genebanks around the world. This provides security of the world's food supply against the loss of seeds in genebanks due to mismanagement, accident, equipment failures, funding cuts, war, sabotage, disease and natural disasters. The Seed Vault is managed under terms spelled out in a tripartite agreement among the Norwegian government, the Crop Trust, and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen). The Norwegian government entirely funded the Seed Vault's approximately ( in 2008) construction cost. Norway and the Crop Trust pay for operational costs. Storing seeds in the vault is free to depositors. The vault has been depicted in several films and other art forms, including Marcus Paus’ children' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States National Arboretum
The United States National Arboretum is an arboretum in northeast Washington, D.C., operated by the United States Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service. It was established in 1927 by an act of Congress after a campaign by USDA Chief Botanist Frederick Vernon Coville. It is in size and is located northeast of the Capitol building, with entrances on New York Avenue, NE and R Street, NE. The campus's gardens, collections, and features are connected by roadways that are long in total. In addition to the main campus in Washington, D.C., there are research locations at the Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland and in McMinville, Tennessee. The Arboretum functions as a major center of botanical research conducted by the USDA, including applied research on trees, shrubs, turf, and the development of new ornamental plants. In addition to a library and a historical collection (archive), the institution also has an extensive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palemon Howard Dorsett
Palemon Howard Dorsett (1862–1943) was an American horticulturalist employed by the USDA. Born April 21, 1862, in Carlinville, Macoupin County, Illinois, he gained a BA from the University of Missouri in 1884, and joined the USDA Section of Plant Pathology seven years later. He left the USDA in 1907 to found his own horticultural business in Alexandria, Virginia, but rejoined the Department in 1909. In 1913 Dorsett began his first foreign expedition, to Brazil, with Archibald Dixon Shamel and Wilson Popenoe. Later expeditions took him to Panama, Manchuria, Ceylon ( Sri Lanka). His trip to East Asia in 1924-1927 with his son, Jim, was his most important in terms of soybean germplasm collected. His agricultural exploration work culminated in the 1928-1931 Dorsett-Morse Agricultural Exploration Expedition to Japan, Korea, and China.Hymowitz, Theodore. 1984. "Dorsett-Morse Soybean Collection Trip to East Asia: 50 Year Retrospectve." Economic Botany. 38(4):378-388 Returning to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frank Nicholas Meyer
Frank Nicholas Meyer (30 November 1875 – 2 June 1918) was a United States Department of Agriculture explorer who traveled to Asia to collect new plant species. The Meyer lemon was named in his honor. Biography He was born Frans Nicolaas Meijer in Amsterdam in 1875. For seven years Meijer was educated at the Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam as an assistant of Hugo de Vries. He emigrated to the United States in 1901 and became an American citizen in November 1908 adopting the name "Frank N. Meyer". In 1901 he first went to work for Erwin F. Smith at the United States Department of Agriculture. In 1902, Meyer began working at USDA's Plant Introduction Station in Santa Ana, California. Meyer was hired in 1905 by the USDA in their Office of Seed and Plant Introduction to send back to the United States economically useful plants as part of an effort, initiated in 1898, to augment United States agriculture and horticulture with plant varieties collected around the world. A particul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Department Of Agriculture
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the United States federal executive departments, federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, and food. It aims to meet the needs of commercial farming and livestock food production, promotes agricultural trade and production, works to assure food safety, protects natural resources, fosters rural communities and works to end hunger in the United States and internationally. It is headed by the United States Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Agriculture, who reports directly to the President of the United States and is a member of the president's Cabinet of the United States, Cabinet. The current secretary is Tom Vilsack, who has served since February 24, 2021. Approximately 80% of the USDA's $141 billion budget goes to the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) program. The largest component of the FNS budget is the Supplementa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Fairchild
David Grandison Fairchild (April 7, 1869 – August 6, 1954) was an American botanist and plant explorer. Fairchild was responsible for the introduction of more than 200,000 exotic plants and varieties of established crops into the United States, including soybeans, pistachios, mangos, nectarines, dates, bamboos, and flowering cherries. Certain varieties of wheat, cotton, and rice became especially economically important. Early life and education Fairchild was born in Lansing, Michigan and was raised in Manhattan, Kansas. He was a member of the Fairchild family, descendants of Thomas Fairchild of Stratford, Connecticut. He graduated from Kansas State College of Agriculture (B.A. 1888, M.S. 1889) where his father, George Fairchild, was president. He continued his studies at Iowa State and at Rutgers with his uncle, Byron Halsted, a noted biologist. He received an honorary D.Sc. degree from Oberlin College in 1915. Career Barbour Lathrop, a wealthy world traveler, persuaded ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
