Anchorage Daily News

PALMER -- On Feb. 26, the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen became the site of what some have referred to as the Doomsday Seed Vault, where the fate of global agriculture chills out.

While international pooh-bahs applauded sending some 100 million seeds into cold storage so the world can have food if disaster strikes, Joe Kuhl was over on Trunk Road busily tending hair grass, saving rhubarb varieties and figuring out ways to make potatoes look different and taste better.

No, Kuhl and the rest of the staff at the Arctic Plant Genetic Resources Project don't have 100 million seeds. They have 300 to 400 collections, part of the bigger picture called the National Plant Germplasm System operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The Agricultural Research Service facility where Kuhl works isn't dug into a remote island in the Arctic Ocean. He works in a converted dairy barn on the University of Alaska Fairbanks Experiment Farm preserving seeds, mostly from grasses, reeds and sedges. And rhubarb -- although Kuhl will tell you saving rhubarb from extinction isn't that easy because the seeds don't always turn out to be like their parents.

RESTORING THE LAND

One of Kuhl's pet projects is his work on hair grass. He has a greenhouse full of it.

"It's widely used for re-vegetation. Mines, fires, roads can all displace native vegetation," he said. "Hair grass germinates quickly, sets roots quickly."

Best of all, he said, when it's time, the area's natural vegetation can come back and push the hair grass out.

He's also looking at it as a turf grass because it handles winters, requires little water and needs scant fertilizer, all qualities that will be more important as water in some places becomes scarce or communities crack down on chemicals that pollute groundwater.

If it can handle constant mowing, he could see it as a way to make golf courses less of a strain on local resources.

THE BIG PICTURE

The hair grass research on Trunk Road is a small part of the National Plant Germplasm System -- not nearly as romantic as making a better avocado, but it's all in the system's mission to "preserve the genetic diversity of plants."

While farmers and gardeners may strive for consistency in what they grow, that can lead to vulnerability to pests and diseases. So germplasm scientists are constantly looking for seeds, particularly in the wild, that will give domesticated plants a better chance of long-term survival.

There are 19 locations in the United States (and one in Puerto Rico) like the one in Palmer that have scientists like Kuhl who hoard seeds, sprigs and other plant-reproduction elements from their area. After they get the seeds, they're charged with preserving them by documenting the plant's origin, date of harvest and other information. Then they make those available to other scientists.

WORLD COMES TO PALMER

In order to have seeds, plants need to grow them.

That's where Stoney Wright and his crew come in.

Wright is manager of the Plant Materials Center off Bodenburg Loop near the Butte.

"I've collected there," Wright said about his trip to the island home of the Doomsday vault. "We've collected species, mostly grasses, from the circumpolar north to provide to researchers."

In addition to seeds from the Svalbard archipelago, he said they have seeds from Greenland, Iceland, Faroe Islands, northern Canada and many other places that have climates similar to Alaska's.

Many of those seeds end up in one of the many plots on the 200 acres Wright oversees at the center.

"We can make comparisons to see if they really are different" from native Alaska grasses.

The University of Wyoming graduate has a degree in range science.

"I do it traditionally, as I was trained," Wright said. "I look just for their appearances. Joe (Kuhl) works at the molecular level. He can go to the genetic level. He looks at the DNA."

Between the two, Wright at the state level and Kuhl on the national, they provide and receive information from all over the world. But their first interest is helping Alaskans.

NO OUTSIDERS WELCOME

In recent years, there has been much more concern in government and industry to use only native plants when restoring land disturbed by construction or natural causes.

Several years ago Wright was summoned to Shemya Island in the Aleutians to re-vegetate an area beside an Air Force runway. The military shaved dunes down because they were creating hazardous crosswinds on the wind-whipped island. Without plants, the sand blew onto the runway, and the Air Force couldn't have that.

Armed with his favorite grass, beach wildrye, Wright flew to Shemya. He and a band of volunteers used a toothed dozer blade to create rows in the sand and then hand-planted the grass.

Two years later, problem solved. Except for birds that came to enjoy the area more.

SIFTING AND CERTIFYING

To make sure every seed is free of contaminants, it goes through a series of cleaning processes by agronomist Andy Nolen. Bigger batches get sorted and cleaned in a huge machine in one of the outbuildings on the grounds. Big as that machine is, Nolen can still sort seeds as small as fireweed, with more than 7 million seeds per pound. They're so small they resemble golden dandruff.

Smaller amounts go through a state-of-the-art cleaner in the main building.

In either case, each seed must be certified by seed analyst Kathi Van Zant.

Wright said Van Zant can identify each seed on sight.

"I'm not so good with tropical plants," she said with dry botanical humor.

Even those packages of radishes brought to Alaska from Outside go through a certification process at a lab similar to Palmer's. Each seed has to be certified at its origin every 18 months, or it's no good. There should be a date reflecting that on the package.

"All labs have the same protocol," Van Zant said, and must be certified by the National Association of Seed Analysts.

A TREE FOR EVERY PLACE

In a room where the temperature is kept at 4 below zero, the center has 1,200 collections of tree seeds sorted by natural habitat: elevation, sun exposure, soil conditions, watershed and other considerations.

With that information logged, anyone needing trees can call Wright and say where the tree will be planted, and he can go to his catalog and find the right seed for that mountainside, valley or river bank.

BE A SCIENTIST

Joe or Jane Gardener also can get involved.

If buying seeds from a display in the grocery store doesn't do it for you, try stretching the limits.

For instance, if you want to create a new a crab apple, you would find through the Web site www.ars-grin.gov/npgs that the Yunnan crab apple is held in the Geneva, N.Y., repository. That particular tree sample was collected in 1980 in China's Shennongia Forest District, northwestern part of the Hubei province. You could get two scions to graft into an existing tree.

In order to participate, though, you must be willing to make an annual report describing how the tree thrived or didn't and provide details.

As of March 16, the National Plant Germplasm System had more than 12,000 species of plants and almost 500,000 accessions, defined by the USDA as "plant material (plant, seed or vegetative part) collected and assigned a number to maintain its identity during evaluation, increase and storage."

Surely that will provide ample opportunities to expand your garden's palette.

Find T.C. Mitchell at adn.com/contact/tcmitchell or 1-907-352-6716.

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