New Zealanders and Americans join forces to fill gaps in clover collections.

摘要

The genus Trifolium comprises some 250 species of which only about 66 are native to the Americas. Only about 12 species are utilized to any extent in planted pastures. The US National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS) sponsored collaborative expeditionsinvolving US and New Zealand scientists during 1994 and 1995 to collect accessions of the less well known, even endangered, species from the western USA. At least 26 new species were added to the NPGS in the 2 years, so that only 5 species native to thewestern USA remain to be collected.