Message on Behalf of CSSA President Jim Coors

Dear Member of CSSA Divisions C1, C7, or C8:

I am requesting some input for an interesting workshop to be held at theupcoming CSSA annual meeting in Salt Lake City on Thursday, November 10,2005. Our assistance is needed for developing a few on-farm breeding projects. In particular, the Farm Breeder Club (FBC) of the Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society (NPSAS) has joined with CSSA to sponsor a workshop with the goal of developing four to five teams consisting ofat least one breeder and farmer to work on an agronomic crop ofimportance to the northern plains.

This is a challenging task that requires some real imagination and thought, and one that would also be very rewarding. I will provide one possible example in the hope that you will be inspired to come up with something as well, probably better. Over the years I have developed a unique open-pollinated corn varietythat has the low-lignin (bm3) gene as well as a tillering gene (gt1). This variety has the ability to regrow from below-ground nodes afterbeing cut for forage in mid to late June. Seed for the next season can then be harvested in the fall, or the crop can again be harvested as forage. There are a number of other interesting uses for this varietythat might utilize its high nutritional quality and unique ability to regrow. However, it does need some additional selection for regrowth potential, and this could easily be done on farm by the person who is developing a particular niche for it. Mass selection would be most effective in this situation.

There are any number of other interesting ideas out there. Breeders always have such projects tucked away in their nurseries, and now is thetime to bring them forward. For small grains, some sort of bulk breeding approach would seem particularly appropriate for an FBC farm-breeder team.

All we need at this point is an indication of your interest, and the briefest sketch of an idea (nothing more than I provided in my example) for a farmer-breeder project. Dr. Marcelo Carena (marcelo.carena@ndsu.nodak.edu) will be coordinating this workshop, andDr. Molly Jahn (mmj9@cornell.edu) has offered to help guide our deliberations when reviewing projects. So please send Dr. Carena your ideas, and if you have any questions, please feel free to contact either Dr. Carena or me.

Sincerely,
Jim