Saturday (March 22, 2003) Discussion Topic:

"To implement action and establish time tables toward expanding the cooperation between government organizations, industry, universities and botanical gardens. We need to focus on the following opportunities and potential stumbling blocks!"

Opportunities:

1. Coordinate, foster, expand, interaction and team building
2. Get closer
3. Raise awareness through creative marketing
4. Team building
5. Water use and quality
6. Better educated audience
7. Germplasm Evaluation
8. Expand forum concept to bring people together
9. Develop website/listserve/newsletter
10. Increase partnership with ANLA
11. More communication between Woody and Herbaceous group
12. Effective internships
13. Take advantage of budget crisis to attract scientists

    Challenges:

14. Communication within the horticulture community
15. Different needs and constraints
16. Clarification of groups/audience
17. Negative stigma in agricultural jobs
18. Lack of reward structure
19. ARS in "Another World"
20. Perceived duplication/competition
21. Too many meetings
22. Bringing something to table versus wanting something at table
23. Evaluating impact of research
24. Improve quality and relevance of research proposals

The Six Highest Priorities:

#1 = 1190	(A)
#3 = 260	(F)
#5 = 20
#6 = 220
#7 = 100
#11 = 350	(D)
#12 = 170
#13 = 50
#14 = 500	(B)
#15 = 340	(E)
#16 = 90
#17 = 170
#18 = 80
#19 = 10
#20 = 210
#21 = 50
#22 = 40
#23 = 440	(C)
#24 = 210

SUGGESTIONS BY DISCUSSION GROUPS TO ADDRESS THE ISSUES:

Issue (A): Coordinate, foster, expand, interaction and team building:

• Give funding priorities to joint CRIS projects
• Have NFF meet or work at more meetings
• Websites and listserves to foster communications
• Use internships to foster professional relationships
• Create regional centers of excellence (like OPGC)

Issue (B): Communication within the horticulture community:

• Meetings, forums
  • Specific focus/concept
  • Multiple levels within invitees
• Community identification
• Information dissemination as output
  • Booklet/Web information
  • Objective of meeting to interact and follow-up dissemination
• Formation of peer groups/common interest
  • Within and between discipline links
  • Electronic work groups (bulletin boards, chat rooms)
• Identify common goals

Issue (C): Evaluate Impact of Research:

• Need to determine if research results have been delivered to target audience
• Develop ways to translate research paper results/conclusions into applied protocols a grower can adopt
• Involve growers in evaluation process – may be needed more if extension personnel dwindle*
• Develop an evaluation model to improve delivery and adoption. For example how long did it take for plug technology to be adapted widely? What were stumbling blocks in adoption process and how could this be improved for the adoption of future new technologies?
• Realize basic and applied research have different audiences and require different evaluation timetables
• Long-term and short-term evaluation may be needed for some research protocols.

Issue (D): More communication between Woody and Herbaceous group:

• It seems to me that there are currently two groups that have similar issues related to germplasm preservation and its use in plant breeding. One was represented at the NFF and the other gets together every other year at METRIA (metropolitan tree improvement alliance). You can see the proceedings from the last several conferences at http://fletcher.ces.state.nc.us/programs/nursery/metria/

  If the two groups could identify a cross-over workgroup perhaps similar issues could be identified (for example the need to maintain and expand conventional plant breeding positions at the university level) and worked on collaboratively. The logical cross-over people are in those in the USDA germplasm system and in botanical gardens that currently advise the woody germplasm unit on collecting priorities such as Rick Lewandowski, Susan Wiegrefe, Margaret Pooler, Mark Roh, Pam Allenstein, Harold Pellet. Team these people with folks from the herbaceous plant advisory group. Get some of these folks to attend the 2004 NFF conference to develop a communication strategy. It seems collecting trips should cover both woody and herbaceous plants in each trip, and regions should be targeted first that contain both woody and herbaceous priority genera.

  Asking botanical gardens to pair with the germplasm storage stations on a particular taxon, each garden agreeing to take on the maintenance of germplasm that needs to be maintained as living plants or is not suited to seed storage, or could not be represented in all its variation at the Center. Say for example I were to take on Baptisia and focus on acquiring as many ecotypes within each species as possible. The OPGC could then rely on my collection rather than taking up its own storage space. This could be done through the NAPCC structure. If gardens also knew where and when collecting trips were scheduled, they could ask that the group look for a taxon or ecotype needed to make their collection more complete, even if that taxon is not one of the priorities for that particular trip.....if someone is in the area collecting, why not be as thorough as possible!

Issue (E): Different needs and constraints:

• First, these need to be identified and those that cause the biggest stumbling blocks to collaboration should be worked on first. One thing that comes to mind is the need for collections of diverse provenance for woody plant breeding. These collections end up being very large and preserving their germplasm may not be as good a use of space as preserving a small amount of a wide number of taxa. For example, here at Cornell Tom Whitlow currently has a large collection of red maples collected from wet and dry sites throughout the species' range. He has found that the dry site maples can adapt easily to wet soils while the converse is not true. The dry site maples could be very useful in future breeding but who should be preserving them?

Issue (F): Raise awareness through creative marketing:

• First reach the related professional groups such as Perennial Plant Association, American Association of Nurserymen, American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta, and the many plant societies to obtain their cooperation in germplasm preservation and the need to funnel more federal, state, and private dollars into plant improvement. Garden writers have a national association; get someone on the agenda for their annual meeting to make a case for writing articles for popular journals such as Fine Gardening, Horticulture, and even in local newspapers that run a gardening column. Perhaps add a module on the role of germplasm preservation in horticulture to the standard Master Gardener curriculum.
• Are there ways for the importance and significance of Floriculture to be highlighted more effectively and frequently to USDA and University Administrators?? University administrators outside of Agriculture lump Floriculture into the same pile with traditional production agriculture and Extension. USDA has obviously decided to let Extension die a slow and painful death and the University Administrators are viewing all of Agriculture going in the same direction as Extension. The industry and USDA need to get behind Floriculture and promote it at the national level to university administration. We need to somehow separate our future from the future demise of Extension and develop a more optimistic picture of potential growth and development. Can the national industry leadership help with this or collaborate with us on this issue? Yes we also need to develop new collaborations to address funding issues. I am not a marketing expert but perhaps we need to collaborate with marketing experts who can help us explore new and innovative approaches.

  I am going to stick my neck out a bit and challenge some of our current programming. I hope this doesn't sound too much like a soapbox. Personally I believe the Master Gardener program is HURTING the Floriculture/Ornamental Horticulture marketing effort with the general public. National consideration to terminate or phase out the program should receive consideration. It is not the sacred cow that some think. What other industry trains volunteers to deliver service/education??? Does the business school train volunteer accountants to provide services that otherwise someone in their industry would get paid to do? The significance of a Master Gardener is frequently erroneously elevated above that of a 4-year horticulture graduate. We should be directing our time, resources and efforts to strengthen the industry and environment. To phase out the Master Gardener Program an alternative Home Gardener Series could be offered to home owners by Universities through Outreach and these programs could bring in funding revenues that could be used for other Horticulture research/graduate students, etc. The majority of Master Gardeners don't participate because they want to volunteer -- they join because they want to learn more about horticulture. So the true demand is for horticulture knowledge -- then let's provide horticultural information through outreach programs to home owners and make them pay for it. These programs could be set up as a series of teaching modules that the homeowners can graduate through. But please do not sell these home owners as trained professionals. It would NOT be appropriate for Master Gardeners to charge for programs as this provides them with monetary reward and if that is to happen then let the individuals come and get professional training as horticulture majors. Some institutions are trying to figure out how to enhance undergraduate enrollment in horticulture -- lets encourage those who want to share horticulture information with homeowners to come and get educated at the university (yes they need to pay for the 4 year degree, we are not going to give it away in a volunteer program). This enhanced education of individuals about horticulture will strengthen the discipline and industry and help to attract strong, intelligent people to the field.

  Traditional Extension - dissemination of free information - is dying and so too is there a need to phase out the Master Gardener Program. Some University Administrators see Master Gardeners as a great numbers driver -- but where is the payback???? Do they bring dollars back to the Horticulture programs???? As the Land Grant Institutions are being asked to re-think funding options so too must programs like Master Gardeners be reviewed. The Master Gardener "Groups" frequently function like garden clubs. That is great in that they do great work, but is it appropriate for the University under restricted budgets to be managing garden clubs? Couldn't they be structured into state garden club organizations that function on their own?

  Master Gardener program may have had an appropriate function at one time but times have changed. Extension in many states requires Extension Specialists to now charge for their services and yet we continue to train "volunteers" to go out and compete with our ability to charge for our programming. The industry could benefit from having opportunities to provide these services (Scott's is already doing this and many others) yet the University is hurting their ability to make it economical. The state industry associations could collaborate with the university to provide educational programs to homeowners -- I tend to trust many of our certified industry professionals to deliver more accurate information than trained volunteers anyway. We need to advocate professionalism in horticulture and not market volunteers as our front line.

Sunday (March 23, 2003) Discussion Topic:

How can we (NFF) best support the continuation of conventional plant breeding (long term, high risk, research, and the training of flower breeding graduate students) at different universities across the country?

Sub-questions:

1. What is the future of conventional breeding education at the university level?
2. What are the positives and negatives of developing and continuing conventional plant breeding courses and programs at different universities across the county?

Negatives:

1. Slow process ® Slow return – can’t do it in one class
2. Seed companies aren’t marketing to employ potential students
3. Administration views breeding as not exciting
4. Funding sources view as not exciting
5. Could dilute focus on well established programs
6. Maintaining a lot of programs is expensive
7. Once started, need to continue, can’t stop if program is not working
8. Who will teach this program? Hard to fill plant breeding positions
9. Low enrollment ® Justification of program when budgets are being cut
10. Requires safety net for new professors

    Positives:

11. Preserve steady flow of trained people
12. Better understanding of bio-diversity and why it is important
13. Unmet demand for graduates
14. Maintains diversity among breeders
15. Get new genetic combinations without as much public outcry
16. Attract more diverse students by introduction at new universities
17. Breeding is interdisciplinary
18. Can generate revenue
19. New professors can gain recognition with new program
20. Stewardship of knowledge within discipline
21. Fulfills part of university’s land grant mission
22. Flower breeding program can be run on a shoestring
23. Help overcome stigma of Ag. Industry
24. Germplasm accumulation

Voting to support conventional plant breeding:

• Yes – 21 votes
• No – 1 vote

Ideas to Support:

• Develop universal set of academic standards for professors of plant breeding
• Position paper needs to be written "To State The Case"
• Effective network/collaboration that can explain/lobby the position
• Forum could contribute to development of web-assisted plant breeding courses
• Need for forum to speak up for plant breeding at university/organization level
• Educate growers to importance
• Create income generating mechanism to support course development/assistantship
• Affiliate faculty appointments for industry personnel
• Program to educate industry leaders on plant breeding
• Forum for flower breeders to create fund for academic support
• Develop/Identify centers of excellence
• Build grass-roots support for program (community support through student involvement)
• Support from development offices of universities/colleges
• Create "Traveling Professor" program

ACTION:

• Generate successful contributions to magazines on "State of Plant Breeding". This can be added in a multitude of ways
• Condense into summary ideas and document to present to ASHS (Business Meeting is briefed and establish venue to discuss ideas)
• Tom Boyle, University of Massachusetts volunteered, Rob Griesbach, USDA was proposed, and Neil Anderson, University of Minnesota and David Tay, OPGC will continue to work on the action.