DTN Ag Policy Blog

A group of Democratic members of Congress on Tuesday wrote House and Senate appropriation leaders asking them to "fully fund and preserve the autonomy" of USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) labs in Illinois, Delaware and California.

Separately, Mexican officials also are asking the U.S. government to keep funding a lab made famous through the work of Norman Borlaug, the plant breeder who developed the wheat that has been credited with saving millions of lives through the "Green Revolution."

USDA's budget proposal for FY 2026 calls for closing the facilities in California, Delaware and Illinois and shifting their work to other ARS labs.

"Relocating or consolidating these labs would jeopardize critical work that supports farmers and rural communities nationwide," the nine Democratic lawmakers wrote. "The disruptions to ongoing research would harm the viability of domestic agriculture and compromise critical science and research."

Slated to close are the National Soybean Germplasm Collection and the Maize Genetics Cooperation Stock Center in Urbana, Illinois, as well as the Beneficial Insects Introduction Research Unit in Newark, Delaware and two programs in Riverside, California -- the Agricultural Water Efficiency and Salinity Research Unit and the National Clonal Germplasm Repository for Citrus.

The Urbana labs storing soybean germplasm and corn genetics help protect agricultural genetic resources, the lawmakers wrote. "Relocating these programs would introduce excessive costs and risk, including the potential loss of irreplaceable genetic material and the disruption of ongoing research."

Moving the labs would also disrupt a close collaboration between ARS scientists and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Moving this lab would not only create unnecessary financial burdens but also risk years of service disruption to American farmers," they wrote.

USDA's budget calls for moving both of those genetic programs to a facility in Columbia, Missouri. Other parts of the Urbana facility's work would shift to Peoria, Illinois, or Ames, Iowa.

Germplasm collections are like living libraries of plant genetic material, explained Adam Davis, professor and head of the University of Illinois Department of Crop Sciences in email correspondence with DTN.

The collection at the Maize Genetics Cooperation Stock Center maintains over 100,000 stocks in its collection that include maize genetic mutants, polyploids, aneuploids, chromosomal translocations and inversions, transposon mutagenesis populations and structured genetic populations. It acquires, maintains and makes available genetic resources with a focus on improving yields, nutritional quality, and stress resilience of corn hybrids.

Those who have eaten ears of "super sweet" corn, or grown specialty waxy hybrids, have utilized two of the many discoveries from this lab.

The National Soybean Germplasm Collection contains many thousands of accessions, ranging from commercial lines to wild relatives to heirloom lines. Scientists can dip into these genetic resources to find answers when yields plateau or diseases make current varieties vulnerable.

In 1992, the soybean lab was part of a unique exchange under a cooperative agreement with the Chinese government that included dozens of modern cultivars and more than 2,000 primitive strains that expanded genetic sources available to public and private researchers.

The Delaware lab is part of the nation's pest management strategy with its work on beneficial insects. The lab managed to receive and collect 366,000 insect specimens in 2023 alone. The lawmakers suggested moving this lab would pose significant challenges because the lab is designed to secure and store hundreds of thousands of small insects. "Replicating this laboratory elsewhere would prove extraordinarily costly and jeopardize the preservation of specimens essential to pest management and national security." USDA is looking to move the lab to Fort Detrick, Maryland.

In California, the Riverside closures include the Agricultural Water Efficiency and Salinity Research Unit -- the only lab in the country focusing specifically on salinity tolerance of crops, "which is critical for agricultural resilience in regions threatened by water scarcity," the lawmakers noted. Also in Riverside is the National Clonal Germplasm Repository for Citrus, which helps support the domestic citrus industry. The units also are co-located with the University of California, Riverside, and its researchers and students. ARS employees also serve as adjunct faculty for the university. "Moving this lab would severely limit its ability to contribute to ongoing advancements in agricultural viability and disrupt important academic collaborations."

The letter was led by freshman Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware as well as Reps. Nikki Budzinski of Illinois and Mark Takano of California, and also both senators from Delaware, Illinois and California.

MEXICO: FUND CIMMYT, THE INTERNATIONAL MAIZE AND WHEAT IMPROVEMENT CENTER

Separately, DTN Political Correspondent Jerry Hagstrom reports a Mexican Embassy official on Monday pleaded with the U.S. government to continue funding CIMMYT (The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center) in Mexico where Norman Borlaug, the American wheat breeder, developed higher-yielding wheat that has been credited with saving millions of lives through the "Green Revolution."

During a discussion of trade issues at American Seed Trade Association Leadership Summit, Carlos Vazquez Ochoa, the agriculture minister at the Mexican embassy in Washington, noted that the Trump administration had canceled $80 million in funding for CIMMYT after dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Vazquez Ochoa repeatedly returned to the point during a discussion with Jason Hafemeister, the acting associate administrator, of the USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service, and Carlos Vanderloo, the minister-counselor for economic and trade policy at the Canadian embassy in Washington. He said the cut amounts to 40% of CIMMYT's budget and affects the work of 500 researchers.

CIMMYT works on an array of dryland crops, particularly corn and wheat. Its programs help support crop production in some of the world's most vulnerable regions. CIMMYT works in more than 80 countries globally.

In a brief interview after the panel, Vazquez Ochoa said he hopes the U.S. will re-establish funding for CIMMYT because the only country that has shown an interest in making up for the loss of the U.S. funding is China. But Chinese officials in return also want to "relocate" the research center closer to China.

CIMMYT grew out of a pilot program sponsored by the Mexican government and the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1940s and '50s, aimed at raising farm productivity in Mexico.

Under Borlaug's leadership, the program developed higher yielding wheat varieties that were more resistant to diseases and provided stable yields in changing conditions for developing countries.

The widespread adoption of improved varieties and farming practices that ensued was called the "Green Revolution."

In 1970, Borlaug, who was leading wheat research at CIMMYT, received the Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to the Green Revolution and curbing world hunger.

The CIMMYT still links to USAID from its "Our Funders" page, but the USAID site now contains a single page with a notice that personnel have been placed on administrative leave.

DTN Crops Editor Pamela Smith and DTN Political Correspondent Jerry Hagstrom contributed to this report.

Chris Clayton can be reached at Chris.Clayton@dtn.com

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