Sustaining the Future of Plant Breeding: The Critical Role of the USDA‐ARS National Plant Germplasm System

Abstract

Plant breeders require genetic diversity to develop cultivars that are productive, nutritious, tolerant of biotic and abiotic stresses, and make efficient use of water and fertilizer. The USDA‐ARS National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS) is a major source for global plant genetic resources (PGR), with accessions representing improved cultivars, breeding lines, landraces, and crop wild relatives (CWR), coupled with passport and trait evaluation data. The goal of this article is to facilitate use of PGR in plant breeding programs. Our specific objectives are (i) to summarize the structure and operation of the NPGS and its consultative and support committees, (ii) to review current use of the system by plant breeders, (iii) to describe constraints to improving the utility of PGR, and (iv) to discuss ways in which the NPGS might evolve to better meet the challenges facing agriculture and society in coming decades. The NPGS will enhance its relevance to plant breeding provided there is (i) ongoing attention to filling the gaps in NPGS collections, especially for CWR; (ii) a major increase in efforts to phenotype and genotype accessions using standardized methods; (iii) enhanced information content of the Genetic Resources Information Network (GRIN)‐Global system and improved interoperability with other databases; (iv) increased attention to prebreeding activities; (v) improved training opportunities in practices for incorporating PGR in breeding programs; and (vi) expanded outreach efforts to strengthen public support for the NPGS. We believe these steps will be implemented most effectively through coordinated efforts among USDA‐ARS, universities, the private sector, and international partners.

2017 Frank Meyer Medal for Plant Genetic Resources Lecture: Stewards of Our Agricultural Future

“…Spinks, personal communication, 2017) to manage and analyze descriptive data associated with PGR. Today, the NPGS's PGR information management system, the Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN)-Global (Byrne et al, 2018), serves the needs of PGR stewards in nine different nations and is poised to become the international standard for PGR information management. A combination of incremental progress and periodically disruptive technological innovations (e.g., the personal computer and the World Wide Web; Halewood et al, 2018) has characterized the evolution of PGR information management systems such as GRIN-Global and Genesys, a website that aggregates information from GRIN-Global and other databases to facilitate PGR distribution (Genesys, 2018).…”

“…For example, the IICA Cooperative Program in Agricultural Research and Technology for the Northern Region (PROCINORTE) network of Canada, Mexico, and the United States formed a genetic resources taskforce termed NORGEN, which has effectively fostered operational cooperation among the national genetic resource efforts of those nations (PROCINORTE, 2018). The NPGS itself has been a coordinated national PGR stewardship network for 40+ yr (Byrne et al, 2018); the CGIAR genebanks have been organizing similarly (CGIAR, 2017), and the DivSeek Initiative has been striving to form data integration and exchange networks (DivSeek, 2018).…”

“…For instance, NPGS curators combine simple "off-the-shelf " equipment such as glass jars and foil packets with barcoded labels and barcode readers to store PGR and communicate seed counts to sophisticated online inventory records, resulting in substantial gains in PGR managerial efficiency. Plant genetic resource stewardship will likely increasingly become an information generation, quality assurance, and management effort, extending a long-term trend (Fu, 2017;Byrne et al, 2018). Such systems can generate substantial datasets that are intrinsically valuable but collectively might prove far more beneficial.…”

“…Activities that comprise PGR stewardship include, roughly in order of importance: PGR maintenance (discussed at greater length below), regeneration and increase, acquisition, documentation and data management, distribution, characterization, evaluation, and genetic enhancement (Fu, 2017). For sustained success in stewardship, some sort of larger "stewardship community" is often key and should include PGR users (Widrlechner, 1997) such as the NPGS's Crop Germplasm Committees (CGC) and Technical Advisory Committees (TAC; GRIN-Global, 2017;Byrne et al, 2018). Many PGR stewards and their collaborators also conduct research designed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of PGR stewardship and to add value to the PGR conserved (Walters et al, 2008).…”

“…Some of the so-called "base collections" for national genebank systems, such as those of Mexico (Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales, Agrícolas y Pecuaria, 2012), the Republic of Korea (Rural Development Administration-Genebank Information Center, 2015), and the United States (USDA-ARS, 2018a) operate from technically sophisticated facilities. From an institutional perspective, a vital element for safeguarding PGR diversity is diversity in sources of financial support (e.g., the long-term partnership between the US federal and state governments to support NPGS genebanks; Byrne et al, 2018), which can contribute to operational stability and continuity. From an institutional perspective, a vital element for safeguarding PGR diversity is diversity in sources of financial support (e.g., the long-term partnership between the US federal and state governments to support NPGS genebanks; Byrne et al, 2018), which can contribute to operational stability and continuity.…”