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[gwl-g] FW: Preserving Flowers by Preserving Their Genes
- From: "Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>
- To: Gardenwriters on Gardening <gwl-g@lists.ibiblio.org>
- Subject: [gwl-g] FW: Preserving Flowers by Preserving Their Genes
- Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 07:57:01 -0700
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From: ARS News Service <NewsService@ars.usda.gov>
Reply-To: ARS News Service <NewsService@ars.usda.gov>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 09:24:49 -0400
To: ARS News subscriber <lonrom@hevanet.com>
Subject: Preserving Flowers by Preserving Their Genes
STORY LEAD:
Beautiful Flowers--It's All in Their Genes
___________________________________________
ARS News Service
Agricultural Research Service, USDA
Don Comis, (301) 504-1625, comis@ars.usda.gov
August 11, 2004
___________________________________________
As you visualize the orange and yellow mums--and maybe the purple asters--in
your soon-to-be fall flower garden, consider what would happen if the genes
for these flowers disappeared.
To make sure this doesn't happen, Agricultural Research Service scientists
and cooperators are helping to preserve these genes as the genetic diversity
of many popular flowers continues to shrink. Breeders often focus on beauty
at the expense of other traits, while development threatens natural
habitats. Both of these factors lead to a narrower gene pool.
ARS, Ohio State University and the American floriculture industry have
created the Ornamental Plant Germplasm Center in Columbus, Ohio, to preserve
flower genes for this rapidly growing sector of U.S. agriculture.
Center director David Tay and colleagues are preserving flower
genes--contained in seeds, bulbs, cuttings and plant tissue--in seed
coolers, greenhouses and fields. The ARS National Center for Genetic
Resources Preservation in Fort Collins, Colo., keeps duplicates in highly
secure storage.
Just three years old, the Ohio center is the newest addition to the U.S.
National Plant Germplasm System, which began in 1946 and now includes 26
genebanks across the country.
With its modern, 6,000-square-foot office-laboratory complex and an
11,500-square-foot greenhouse complex, the Columbus center is one of the few
flower genebanks in the world. This year, the center added a tissue culture
lab for housing tissues of daylilies, geraniums and other vegetatively
propagated flowers. The center maintains a total collection of more than
2,000 plant accessions from around the world. It recently acquired an X-ray
machine to screen out empty seeds and check for damage from cleaning.
The floriculture industry is vital to the economies of many states, like
Ohio. Nationally, floriculture is a $13-billion-a-year industry, while
globally it's worth about $50 billion.
Read more about the flower genebank in the current issue of Agricultural
Research magazine, available online at:
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/aug04/flower0804.htm
ARS is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific research
agency.
___________________________________________
* This is one of the news reports that ARS Information distributes to
subscribers on weekdays.
* Start, stop or change an e-mail subscription at
www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/subscribe.htm
* NewsService@ars.usda.gov | www.ars.usda.gov/news
* Phone (301) 504-1638 | fax (301) 504-1648
- [gwl-g] FW: Preserving Flowers by Preserving Their Genes, Lon J. Rombough, 08/11/2004
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