I think I vaguely knew that USDA had a hemp collection, but I would definitely not have been able to say that it was located in Geneva, NY, that it may be the largest in the world, or that it only started in 2021. Fortunately, though, the researchers responsible for the collection organized a USDA Hemp Stakeholder Event at Cornell AgriTech on September 10, and the good people at the International Hemp Podcast are summarizing the proceedings in a series of four episodes. Episode 1 is out and it includes those tidbits I began with, as well as lots of other interesting information, about hemp in particular but also more generally about how the US genebank system works. Well worth a listen.
But is it the largest collection in the world? Well, the podcast says it has over 800 accessions, and GRIN does indeed return 871 (714 active, 92 available). However, Genesys, which gets its USDA data from GRIN, says 569, which is at least closer to the “N > 600 accessions” on the webpage of the USDA Hemp Germplasm Laboratory. As it’s a fairly new collection, this all probably just means that its numbers go up fairly frequently and USDA just hasn’t updated either its website or its data on Genesys lately. Anyway, that would still make it more accessions than at VIR (491), but fewer than in Ukraine (610). That Ukraine number is split over two institutes, though. So it does look like USDA has managed to put together the world’s largest hemp collection in just 5 years. Pretty impressive.