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By: Christopher Bernau Great Basin Plant Materials Center Manager
at the Great Basin Plant Materials Center
protect the landscape. The objective was to find these plant materials, evaluate them and select for desired characteristics, then release a cultivated variety for commercial production. The program was designed to facilitate conservation plant production since no comparable industry existed for those plant materials. As time progressed, the focus turned towards developing native plant cultivars for release.
1. Entry sign for the Great Basin Plant Materials Center
The plant materials program turned out to be a great success. Since the first PMC was opened in the 1930s, 740 plant varieties have been developed and released to the public. Currently there are 600 released varieties on the market, with an estimated $3.65 private sector earning for every $1 federally invested. The plant materials program has also expanded its role since the 1930s. In addition to developing plant materials, we now have a greater emphasis on providing conservation training to our NRCS field offices, and we maintain, update and publish technical notes and plant guides. The GBPMC’s accomplishments are not quite as storied as our sister centers. This is because they have almost a century of activity to work with, whereas we had our grand opening in 2006, making us the newest center. In that short time, we have done quite a bit of work.
The Great Basin Plant Materials Center (GBPMC) just wrapped up its summer studies, rounding off a year that saw the completion of a two-year, 60 variety winter cover crop study, a summer cover crop seeding rate study, the completion of two plant guides, a joint University of Nevada Reno (UNR) – GBPMC sorghum genomewide association study, and a joint UNR-GBPMC field tour. We have been busy. You might be wondering what exactly is the GBPMC. We are a Plant Materials Center (PMC), located in Fallon, Nevada, focused on the conservation of plant materials and technologies specifically for the Great Basin. We are part of a nationwide network of 25 PMCs (Figure 2), all under the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service. These PMCs are strategically located in ecologically distinct areas, which allow us to evaluate plants and vegetative technologies to support USDA conservation programs and services throughout the United States. The origin of the NRCS plant materials program is very similar to the NRCS itself in that both were born out of the Dust Bowl, when the combination of a severe water shortage and harsh farming techniques created a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The highly eroded landscapes and depleted rangelands were extremely problematic, making it clear that a program was needed to conserve these resources. The plant materials program was first tasked to scour the earth looking for plants to 2. Location of all our Plant Materials Centers and two partner centers in Colorado and Alaska
3: Retired Plant Materials Center Manager, Dr. Eric Eldredge, evaluates sunn hemp as a summer cover crop
Our first projects included a poplar wood biofuel study, producing squirreltail seed for restoration and establishing half a dozen off-center studies evaluating desert restoration techniques. Recently, the national plant materials program has listed soil health as a resource concern on which to focus. In response, the GBPMC participated in national cover crop studies, which included that nationwide 60 variety winter cover crop study mentioned earlier, and a regional sunn hemp cover crop adaptation study (Figure 3). The GBPMC has not released any plant materials for restoration yet, as these can take six to 10 years to get rolling, but we have participated in plant materials evaluation. We recently worked with the Logan, Utah, Agriculture Research Station (ARS) to evaluate desert adaptation for three native legumes; majestic prairie clover, Searls’ prairie clover, and basalt milkvetch. The Logan ARS recently released Searls’ prairie clover ‘Fanny’ and continues its work on the other two (Figure 4). We have also evaluated plant collections from the U.S. Forest Service; evaluated a whirled buckwheat developed by the Idaho PMC; evaluated 40 commercially available bunch grasses for adaptation in our extremely arid climate; and are partnered with UNR looking at sorghum for Nevada. 24 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018
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