National Plant Genetic Resources Program — USDA Germplasm Conservation

The future of American agriculture depends on genetic diversity — the raw material that plant breeders use to develop crops that can resist new diseases, survive new climate conditions, tolerate changing pest pressures, and meet evolving nutritional needs. For the related framework protecting plant breeders' intellectual property in new varieties, see plant variety protection. For USDA's broader agricultural research grant framework, see USDA agricultural research grant framework. The National Genetic Resources Program (NGRP), established under 7 U.S.C. §§ 5841–5844, requires the USDA Agricultural Research Service to collect, preserve, evaluate, and share the genetic material that will underpin crop and livestock improvement for generations.

This isn't an abstraction. When a new wheat rust strain appeared that threatened global wheat production in the 2000s, plant breeders found resistance genes in wild relatives of wheat preserved in germplasm repositories — genes that had been collected from farmers' fields in Turkey decades earlier. Without that preserved genetic diversity, there would have been no ready source of resistance. The NGRP is insurance against genetic bottlenecks that could leave American crops defenseless against future threats.

Current Law (2026)

Legal Authority

• 7 U.S.C. § 5841 — Establishment, purpose, and functions (Secretary must establish National Genetic Resources Program through ARS; program collects, preserves, evaluates, and distributes genetic material relevant to food and agriculture; repositories must represent diversity of U.S. agricultural and natural genetic resources; materials available to researchers)
• 7 U.S.C. § 5842 — Appointment and authority of Director (Secretary appoints Director; Director carries out duties assigned by law and Secretary; Secretary, through Director, runs program and sets operational policies)
• 7 U.S.C. § 5843 — Advisory council (Secretary establishes advisory council to advise on program activities, policies, and operations; includes ex officio federal members and non-federal scientific experts)
• 7 U.S.C. § 5844 — Definitions and authorization (Program, Secretary, Director defined; such sums as necessary authorized for the program)

How It Works

What the Program Does

The NGRP manages the National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS) — a network of repositories across the United States that together hold more than 600,000 accessions of seeds, plant tissues, pollen, and vegetative materials from crops, wild crop relatives, and plants with potential agricultural use. The system includes:

• Fort Collins, Colorado — the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation, a long-term cold storage facility that holds backup samples of much of the NPGS collection
• Pullman, Washington — small grains (wheat, barley, oats), forages, and legumes
• Ames, Iowa — corn, sorghum, sunflower, and other Midwestern crops
• Griffin, Georgia — peanuts, sweet potatoes, and southern crops
• Davis, California — stone fruits, nuts, and vegetatively propagated crops
• Mayagüez, Puerto Rico — tropical crops that require warm-climate storage and regeneration
• Aberdeen, Idaho — potato germplasm

Each repository specializes in particular crops or plant types, maintaining living collections (for crops that can't be stored as seeds), seed collections (for most crops), and tissue culture collections (for some vegetatively propagated crops).

Why Genetic Diversity Matters

Crop genetic diversity has been steadily narrowing since the Green Revolution. Modern high-yielding varieties are genetically very similar to each other — bred from the same elite parent lines. This uniformity makes agriculture efficient but vulnerable. The Irish Potato Famine was a genetic bottleneck tragedy: when the dominant potato variety had no resistance to Phytophthora infestans (potato blight), the entire crop failed. American corn nearly suffered the same fate in 1970, when a new strain of Southern corn leaf blight devastated the dominant hybrid corn variety.

The NPGS preserves the genetic diversity that breeders need to continually improve crops: resistance genes from wild relatives, traits adapted to extreme environments, nutritional profiles different from commercial varieties, and characteristics that may not matter today but could be critical in 30 years under changed climate conditions.

Distribution to Researchers

The NGRP makes germplasm accessions available to researchers — public and private — worldwide at no charge. A plant breeder at a university working on drought-tolerant sorghum can request seeds from specific accessions in the Ames repository; a seed company developing disease-resistant beans can access wild bean relatives; an international research center working on climate adaptation can request materials relevant to crops in their region. This open access is built into the program's design: genetic resources are a public good that improves most when widely available for research.

The Advisory Council

The advisory council established under § 5843 includes both ex officio federal members (representatives from USDA agencies, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Academies, and other relevant federal entities) and non-federal scientific experts who provide outside perspective on the program's priorities and operations. The council advises on what collections to prioritize for acquisition, what species are underrepresented, and how to allocate resources among the geographically dispersed repository network.

How It Affects You

If you're a plant breeder at a university, seed company, or international research center: The NPGS is one of the most underutilized resources in American agriculture — germplasm requests are free, processed through the Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN) at ars-grin.gov, and available to qualified researchers worldwide. The GRIN database contains over 600,000 accessions with searchable trait data, geographic origin, and evaluation records. Request processing typically takes 4-8 weeks for seed accessions, longer for vegetatively propagated materials. The database includes not only cultivated varieties but wild relatives of major crops — the source of resistance genes that have saved commodity crop industries from disease disasters. For private seed companies, GRIN accessions provide a legitimate, royalty-free source of diverse genetic material for breeding programs, with the only obligation being to share any resulting variety back under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources standard terms if the material comes from treaty-covered crops.

If you grow specialty crops, heirloom varieties, or operate a community seed library: The NPGS preserves thousands of heirloom and landrace varieties that are no longer commercially available — many collected from farms and markets around the world before they disappeared from active cultivation. You can request seeds from GRIN for research and non-commercial purposes; the system is not designed for commercial scale-up but is accessible for preservation and evaluation work. The system also accepts donations of unique material — if you have varieties that aren't in the collection, ARS repositories may be interested in incorporating them. GRIN's database shows the evaluation data that previous researchers have generated on each accession, which can help identify varieties worth working with.

If you follow food security, climate resilience, or agricultural policy: The NGRP's 600,000+ accessions represent approximately 40 years of systematic collection — and they are irreplaceable. The National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation in Fort Collins uses cryogenic storage to maintain backup seeds at -196°C, protecting against fire, flood, or other disasters at the individual repositories. Unlike the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (Norway), which is a backup-of-backups for national seed banks, Fort Collins is an active facility — accessions are regenerated, evaluated, and distributed from there. DOGE-related ARS staffing reductions in 2025 raised concerns among plant breeding researchers because curation, regeneration, and evaluation require skilled personnel; seeds that aren't regenerated on schedule can die, losing the genetic material entirely.

State Variations

This is entirely federal law — the NGRP is a federal program managed by ARS with no state-level counterpart. State agricultural experiment stations frequently collaborate with NGRP repositories on collection evaluation and characterization work, but they don't maintain independent germplasm preservation systems at the same scale.

Pending Legislation

No major pending legislation targeting the NGRP as of April 2026. The program receives annual ARS appropriations. There are ongoing discussions about updating U.S. compliance with the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (the International Seed Treaty), which governs access and benefit-sharing for crop genetic resources among signatory countries.

Recent Developments

• ARS staffing reductions and DOGE (2025): The Trump administration's DOGE efficiency initiative targeted USDA Agricultural Research Service, which administers the NGRP. ARS is the primary intramural federal agricultural research agency, and its staffing reductions raised alarm in the plant breeding and food security community because germplasm curation is labor-intensive: seeds must be periodically grown out to maintain viability, evaluated for traits, and properly documented. Researchers warned that delayed regeneration could result in irreplaceable accessions dying before they can be maintained. Congressional champions of agricultural research secured some protections for ARS programs during FY2025 appropriations.
• Wild relative collections prioritized for climate resilience: ARS has prioritized collecting and preserving wild relatives of staple crops from biodiversity hotspots in the Andes (potato, tomato, quinoa), Mesoamerica (maize, beans), and the Mediterranean (wheat, barley, chickpea) — regions where wild populations of crop relatives contain stress-tolerance genes adapted to difficult environments. These collections are considered especially urgent because climate change and habitat loss are eliminating wild populations faster than they can be sampled.
• International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources: The U.S. is a party to the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (the Plant Treaty or ITPGRFA), which creates a multilateral system for sharing crop genetic resources among signatory countries. Under the treaty, signatories are supposed to provide genetic resources from 64 covered crops in a standard "easy access" framework and share monetary benefits if commercial products are developed from treaty materials. U.S. compliance with benefit-sharing obligations under the treaty has been inconsistent; negotiations over the treaty's Digital Sequence Information provisions continued in 2023-2025.
• Wheat rust resistance — a recent case study: In the late 2000s, Ug99, a new strain of wheat stem rust, threatened to devastate global wheat production. Plant breeders at CIMMYT and national programs, working with NPGS materials including accessions of wild wheat relatives (Aegilops and Triticum species), identified multiple resistance genes. The GRIN system's searchable trait database allowed rapid identification of accessions with Ug99 resistance markers, demonstrating the practical value of systematic evaluation data alongside preserved seeds.