Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Welcome and Overview

– Rick Boyles

The meeting was called to order on Aug. 26, 2020 at 8:05 am by S-009 Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) Chair Richard Boyles. Richard Boyles presented an introduction discussing current challenges facing agriculture due to changing environmental conditions and the importance of the S-9 committee in helping to address those challenges. The mission and meeting goals were presented as following: 

Mission: Report on the regional utilization of plant genetic resources maintained by the S-009 (PGRCU) to increase awareness of outreach and impact and foster improvements to pant genetic resource conservation. 

Meeting Goals:

1.) Increase interaction among committee members and the S-009 team

2.) Discuss ongoing challenges and participate in ‘thought-provoking’ dialogue

1. What challenges exist for the PGRCU?
2. How can representatives promote the S-009 unit to our constituents?

3.) Provide a detailed state report on the trending utilization of accessions to the S-009 team and committee

1. Can we dive deeper? 

Introductions – past, present, and new members

- Melanie Harrison

Melanie Harrison introduced herself and participants from the unit. State representatives then introduced themselves. The following changes in committee membership were noted: Hamid Ashrafi (NCSU) replaces Tom Stalker (retired). Vivian Carro-Figueroa (UPR) replaces Diego Viteri-Dillon (permanent replacement TBD). 

Approval of 2019 Minutes

- Rick Boyles

Boyles presented minutes with summary of debate from last year on proper function of the S-009 RTAC. Comments are summarized as follows: Bertioli: We do not have expertise to advise curators on how the money is spent. In the past, members did not seem to have any type of advisory role, just expected to present report of state utilization. We need more guidance on how to execute desired functions of state representative role. Boyles: Would like input from curators as to what they would like from the state reps. Needs to be discussed in more detail. Request move discussion to later in the meeting. Bas made a motion to approve the minutes from the 2019 TAC Annual Meeting. Sykes seconded. None opposed. Passed 

Nominations for 2021 officers and meeting location

- Rick Boyles

Boyles presented a poll for members to vote for the incoming secretary position. Bertioli received the most votes. She agreed to serve. Boyles moved to accept Bertioli as incoming secretary. Baldwin seconded. None opposed. Passed. Sykes moved from secretary to chair for 2021. 

Sykes offered to host at UT Knoxville in 2021. Boyles passed along that Gerald offered TX to host in 2022. Boyles asked about PGOC – Plant germplasm operating committee. Bretting said they meet every 5 yrs with technical advisory committees. Last meeting was in Ft. Collins, CO in 2016. Bretting will look into if and when PGOC meeting will occur and if technical advisory committees will be invited since 2020 would be the 5^th year. Not sure if funds available for travel and prep. Boyles made a motion to host in Knoxville, TN unless participation in PGOC joint meeting a possibility. Bretting seconded. None opposed. Passed. 

 “Genetic Resources: The Long Road Behind and Ahead”

- Stephen Kresovich

 Summary:

• Career focus: characterizing and producing genetic and genomic resources
• Questions
  • How do you measure quality of collection?
  • What does germplasm contribute to science and society?
• Early part of career spent in characterizing diversity using molecular techniques
• Switched from focus on conservation to utilization
• Current approach – transdisciplinary
  • Genomics
  • Phenomics
  • Sensors
  • Data analytics
  • Robotics
  • Cloud Computing
• Building Community Resources
  • Grain Sorghum Association Panel (GSAP)
    • Agronomic screening with a genetics basis (every entry is genotyped)
    • Significant number of agronomic and compositional traits collected over multiple locations over the past decade – manuscript cited more than 270 times
  • Bioenergy Association Panel (BAP)
    • Among the 50 yield-related traits and compositional components assessed, significant differences were noted for most traits
  • Carbon Partitioning Nested Association Mapping (NAM) Populations
  • Hybrid diversity panel
    • Predicting hybrid yield from inbred genomic data
    • Can we identify genomic pockets that associate with heterosis?
  • Significant amount of resources required to build these resources
  • Where does the money come from to build community resources?
  • Cost more to develop but also more likely to be utilized
• Future
  • Adding value to seed in plant germplasm collection
    • Examples
      • Using genotyping to understand how flavor has been lost in modern tomato – genetic erosion (Tieman et al. 2017)
      • Tomato pan-genome (Lei Gao et al. 2019)
        • Identified 5,000 additional genes beyond reference genome
        • Types of genes
          • Core (all accessions have that gene)
          • Softcore (in 99% or more accessions)
          • Shell (in 1-99% of accessions)
          • Cloud (in single accession)
        • What does pan-genome cost?
          • ~$250 per accession, may need 400 or more accessions
          • Costs will continue to go down
          • Not a big investment considering value
          • Will provide stronger integration of population quantitative an evolutionary genomics for crop improvement, studies of genetic diversity, effectiveness of conservation, improved breeding, and additional genetic insights
        • Don’t recommend sequencing everything, but do use to answer important biological questions
      • Vision for the future: Coordinated Plant Cartography - Linking diversity in the genome with in situ and ex situ genetic resources
        • Stay current
        • Know the important biological questions
        • Need renaissance mindset

 Questions/Discussion

• Have we saturated germplasm collections and need to focus on better explaining what we have or should we focus on expanding?
  • Depends on collection. Some well represented, others not.
  • Peter Bretting, working on this question nationally. Should come out with report by end of fiscal year.

 “The National Plant Germplasm System: 2020 Status, Prospects, and Challenges”

- Peter Bretting 

Summary

• Collections
  • Most collections associated with land grant university location
  • Just under 600,000 accessions. Pretty stable at this point, about 0.5% per year. Most growth in genetic stocks.
  • Focus on developing genomic data
  • Acquisition of horticultural crops greater than growth of agronomic
• Requests
  • 40 – 50% of collection requested each year
  • Varies by crop, soybean very high
  • Mostly requested by state land grant researchers
    • 2/3 to 3/4 goes to public, remaining the private
    • 2/3 to 3/4 are domestic, remaining international
  • Effects of covid
    • International shipments mostly ceased
    • GRIN-Global functioning normally
  • Budget
    • 5% increase to ARS proposed by house
    • 2019 budget was higher than previous years, but deflated budget (adjusted for purchasing power, purchasing power has mostly decreased since 2002
  • Key challenges
    • How to we handle increased demand with decreased purchasing power?
    • Wave of personnel retirements
    • Developing and applying cryopreservation for clonal germplasm
    • Developing BMP for managing accessions
    • Acquiring and conserving additional germplasm, especially of crop wild relatives
  • Priorities
    • Maintenance
    • Regeneration
    • Documentation and Data Management
    • Acquisition
    • Distribution
    • Characterization
    • Evaluation
    • Enhancement
    • Research in support of the preceding priorities
  • Plant genetic resource management training initiative
    • Distance-learning workshop and publication developed
      • Designed for training new employees and to pique college student interest
    • Instruction e-book under development
  • Budget increases in FY 2019
    • Coffee (1.9 million)
    • Citrus (1 million)
    • Hemp (500,000)
  • NPGS video
    • swamped with non-research requests. Needed new tactic for discouraging these and better explaining to the general public how these resources are used and can benefit society 

“Report from SAAESD & National Plant Germplasm Coordinating Committee”

- Bob Stougaard 

Summary

• Southern Ag Experiment Station Directors expecting 5 – 15% budget cut for next fiscal year due to covid
• NPGCC, Melanie Harrison will be moving into a position on the NPGCC

 PGRCU Annual Update and Group Discussion

- Melanie Harrison 

Summary

• PGRCU second largest site in NPGS, currently over 100,000 accessions
• Past S-009 reports and minutes now all available online
• Project plan and members on NIMSS site
  • Includes guidelines for committees
  • Role according to guidelines is as advisory committee to make sure on track in project plan
  • Melanie files official report to Bob Stougaard within 60 days of meeting which compiles state reports. This is put into NIMMS.
• Employees
  • Eight S-009 positions with UGA and 16 federal positions. Currently have 3 vacant positions. No part-time employees this year because of covid.
• Collection
  • 86% of accessions available for distribution and 97% safely backed up
  • Approximately 88% inventory in -18 C
  • 16,275 seed and clonal accessions distributed upon request Oct. 2019 – Aug. 2020.
  • 100,081 accessions representing 286 genera and 1602 species as of Aug. 2020.
• Characterization efforts
  • Image and basic descriptor data to be collected during regenerations
  • Characterization studies in jute, basella, butterfly pea, peanut, sorghum, loofah, and okra
  • Virus testing in vegetable collection
  • Shyam Tallury received grant for developing diagnostic tools for detection of Peanut Clump Virus and Indian Peanut Clump Virus
  • USDA grant awarded to University of Arkansas to characterize Vigna germplasm for drought tolerance
• Regeneration update
  • In 2019, 2993 accessions pulled for regeneration
  • On campus regenerations mostly postponed in 2020 due to pandemic, late summer plantings possible for a few crops
• Other updates
  • Multiple facility updates
  • Updating crop vulnerability statements for peanut and forage and turfgrass
  • Vigna Crop Germplasm Committee moved from regional meeting to tri-society resulted in increased participation
• Outreach
  • NPGS video series filmed in Griffin
  • Mentorship program (canceled in 2020)
  • No tours since pandemic
  • Updated website

 Questions/Discussion

• Chen: How did covid affect field work?
  • Harrison: No spring planting, employees are back and late season plantings are happening
• Boyle: Where is collection backed up?
  • Harrison and Bretting: Fort Collins, CO and Svalbard
• Chen: At what category are the vacant curator positions going to be advertised?
  • Bretting: Most curator positions category 4
  • Melanie: Grade level for cat 4 has increased to make these positions more desirable
• Boyles: With growth of breeding programs in developing countries, do you anticipate an increase in international requests moving forward? Is that going to be a challenge in terms of workload
  • Bretting: In the past, have seen increase in requests from countries transitioning from developing to developed (i.e. China, India, Latin American countries). Haven’t seen as many lately. Quite a few requests from Europe. Currently, seeing across the board increases in developed and developing countries. New group of customers and stakeholders in the genomics community appears to be driving the increased demand.
  • Harrison: Have not seen increase in sorghum and millet
  • Morris: Seeing increase in foreign distribution in sesame
• Chen: Crispr and mutation material, will that go into germplasm collection?
  • Harrison: Capable of handling material, need to consider if it will be of value to the community, don’t do seed increases, once all distributed, do not regenerate
  • Tallury: Must agree to be freely distributed
• Giraldo: Are their curators working with root crops, specifically taro?
  • Bretting: Check with Hilo and Puerto Rico stations.

 PGRCU Annual Update and Group Discussion

­- Boyles 

Participation

• Boyles showed information available on S-009 group on NIMSS website. Have to go through experiment station director to get added to S009 group in NIMSS.
• Chen: some of state representative on NIMSS don’t participate. Harrison: not sure how to handle that. Kenworthy: May be travel issues, mostly western representatives not coming for ½ day meeting. Boyles: should we offer zoom as an option every year as a hybrid in-person, virtual participation? Liu: I am the new rep from Texas, I joined because my institution had an equipment fund available and must be on multi-state to apply. Sykes: We should do a better job of communicating to members that they can request travel funds from their university rather than relying on University administration to let people know they have a pool of funding specific to multi-state project meetings. 

Request for Curator Input for Coming Year

• Tallury: Would like to see more state reports with data attached so it can be added back to GRIN global. Sykes: Should we follow up with folks to see if they would be willing to provide dataset when developing state reports?
• Sykes: Should state report include material not distributed from Griffin? Harrison: only include material distributed from Griffin. Could bring up at PGOC whether we should include material requested from other locations.

 State Reports

 State reports were given by all present state representatives.

 Adjourn

 Meeting was adjourned at 12:30 pm.