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magazine
story to find out more.
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The ARS Cotton Winter Nursery in Tecoman, Mexico,
which turns 60 this year, is one of the longest running cooperative facilities
of its kind. Click the image for more information about it.
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ARS Nursery in Mexico Plays Key Role in Cotton
Breeding
By Dennis
O'Brien
January 7, 2010 There may not be a birthday cake, but
this year’s 60th anniversary of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS)
Cotton
Winter Nursery (CWN) in Tecoman, Mexico, is a milestone worth celebrating.
The CWN is the site for about two dozen government, university and private
scientific research projects each year and an essential tool for ARS scientists
working to enhance the nation’s $3.8 billion cotton crop.
The nursery’s years of service make it one of the longest running
cooperative facilities of its kind. Later this year, Mexican and U.S.
scientists plan to discuss the CWN’s future operations at an annual
conference in nearby Manzanillo, Mexico.
Since its inception, the CWN has been operated jointly by ARS, the
National Cotton Council of America, and
the Mexican
Institute of Forestry, Agriculture and Livestock Research, Mexico’s
ARS equivalent. A committee of government, academic and industry scientists
serves as advisors.
Cotton seeds stay viable for only about 10 years, so each year the curator
of the ARS
Cotton
Germplasm Collection in College Station, Texas, sends between 700 and 1,000
cotton accessions to the CWN to produce new seeds. Each plant represents a
storehouse of unique genetic material that could prove useful for increasing
yields, improving fiber quality and controlling future pests and pathogens.
Cotton is particularly susceptible to insects, pathogens and environmental
extremes and together they can make it a challenge to produce plants with the
right combination of long, strong fibers that are uniform in length.
There also has been stagnation in cotton yields in recent years. Many
experts attribute that stagnation to the crop's narrow genetic base, but less
than 1 percent of the plant’s genetic base has been explored. The
nursery’s tropical location provides a setting for that exploration by
ensuring a habitat for many wild collected varieties and shortening the time
required to study and develop new varieties by allowing researchers to raise
two generations of cotton each year.
Read
more about this and other ARS collections in the January 2010 issue of
Agricultural Research magazine.
ARS is the principal intramural scientific research agency of the
U.S. Department of Agriculture.
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