Seed storage facility expansion under way

FORT COLLINS – It’s getting a little cramped in the seed storage facility on the Colorado State University campus.

The low-profile facility is home to millions of seeds and thousands of animal genetic material samples. And with about 20,000 samples of new seeds coming in for storage every year, the center has run out of space to properly store everything.

That’s why it’s in the middle of an expansion program that will virtually double its storage capacity and meet its needs for the next 15 to 20 years.

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“We’re cramped,´ said Dave Ellis, the center’s curator and a plant physiologist. “We have 80 percent of the world’s wheat and corn germplasm and 100 percent of the rice stored here. If we would lose any of the germplasm it could jeopardize our future food security.”

Ellis said the center is adding another giant 5,000-square-foot storage freezer to keep up with the seed storage demand. The expansion project got underway in January 2006 but complications with insulation specifications, refrigeration handling capacity, parts availability and subcontractor snafus have put the project about one year past its original completion date.

A contract was awarded to general contractor Bison Constructors of Stanley, N.M. to complete the project for a total bid of about $907,000. Notice to proceed was given to Bison Constructors to begin work on Jan. 4, 2006, with completion set for May of that year, according to Richard Jansen, contracting officer for the USDA’s Agricultural Research Office in Fort Collins.

Technical delays

But Tim Crace, Bison Constructors estimator and superintendent, said there was “no way” the project could have been finished in four and a half months. Crace said insulation panels shipped to the center did not pass inspection and caused a significant delay, along with other revisions to the project.

“It’s just technical questions that had to be answered,” he said. “We do an awful of work for USDA – this one just happens to have some unique technical problems.”

For example, most of the seeds stored in the center have to be kept at a constant zero degrees Fahrenheit. That meant sizing the refrigeration units to the right capacity to keep up with the load and having the right insulation panels to not overwork them.

Crace said the parts needed to finish the job are now being manufactured, a process he said will take several months. He expects to resume work on the project in September and finish the job by mid-December.

While that’s significantly longer than the project was supposed to take, Crace said it’s more important to do the job right rather than worry about meeting deadlines.

“It’s better to take a little longer to get it done correctly so there’s no reason to have to re-do something five years down the road,” he said.

Jansen said with a contract of less than $1 million, there’s little the USDA can do under its regulations to hold the contractor accountable for delays. “It’s what you call just one of those things that happen,” he said. “It’d be nice to have it now, but we’re storing things in other places until it’s finished.”

Those other places include hallways in the center’s existing storage vault and in other smaller refrigerated spaces – wherever the material can be safely stored without degrading.

Not yet a problem

Wil Blackburn, area director for the Fort Collins office of the Agricultural Research Service that oversees the seed storage lab, said he’s not concerned with the project’s lack of progress – at least for now.

“As far as I know it’s not causing us to not be able to get our work done,” he said.

The United States has been storing seeds and plant genetic material for more than 50 years, eventually establishing the National Seed Storage Laboratory on the Colorado State University campus in the 1950s.

The seed lab was significantly expanded in 1992, and in 2001 the facility’s name was changed to the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation to reflect an expanded mission beyond seed storage. The center now also serves as a repository for animal genetic material – primarily semen from food animals such as cattle, pigs, sheep and poultry – and plant material such as graftable buds and in vitro plantlets.

Some of the plant material is stored in large stainless steel tanks filled with liquid nitrogen that maintain a constant temperature of about 300 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

Ellis said the center is aided in its work by 30 field offices spread across the nation, including Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, that contribute new seed material and replace material that has become no longer viable.

Century of storage

“Some of the seeds we can store for 100 years plus, others for maybe 25 to 50 years,” he said, adding that some material – like potato tubers – must be replaced every three years.

Ellis said the center performs a quiet but very important role in the preservation of the world’s food supply. “We’re trying to make sure we don’t lose these because we don’t know what will happen in the future,” he said.

Ellis noted one particular instance in which the center helped restore five types of apples that would have gone extinct had there not been more seeds available at the storage lab. And under the U.S. policy of sharing the facility with the world, Ellis said seeds can be stored by or replaced for other nations free of cost.

“We consider these seeds a global asset,” he said.

One of the most recent examples of the value of the seed storage facility is in the threat to America’s ash trees. The emerald ash borer beetle has decimated millions of ash trees in the Midwest and East since 2002.

Ash seeds being stored in the seed lab could be used to re-establish the popular trees if they are wiped out by the beetle, which has so far proved resistant to all eradication methods.