During 1995, 2012 seed samples have been supplied in response to 264 requests. Of these, a total of 60 requests were received from 20 foreign countries. Approximately two thirds of our requests were received by electronic mail or through our order form on the World-Wide Web.

Spring rains caused a delay of planting and then soil crusting; this was followed by a very hot and dry summer followed by an early killing frost. In addition to this, our plants' root systems were compromised by rootworms. About 5 acres of nursery were grown. Despite the weather and pests, and with the help of irrigation, good increases were obtained of numerous stocks that were in low supply and new stocks from the collections of Marcus Rhoades, Donald Robertson, Ed Coe, Hugo Dooner, Barbara McClintock, Jerry Neuffer, and Nina Fedoroff. Special plantings were made of several categories of stocks, with special attention given to the collection of reciprocal translocations developed by A. E. Longley and E. G. Anderson. Some tests for allelism were made within groups of mutants of similar phenotype. We had a spotty winter nursery at the USDA facility in Isabela, Puerto Rico last year due to a problem with the soil. However, soil tests did not reveal any specific toxicity or deficiency. Our winter crop in Puerto Rico looks excellent this year, so far.

We have obtained additional stocks from the collections of Jerry Neuffer, Ed Coe, Jerry Kermicle, Kevin Simcox, Donald Robertson, William R. Findley, Karen Cone, Robert Brawn, and John Laughnan. Through the help of Rob Martienssen and Paul Chomet, we obtained stocks from the collection of Barbara McClintock. We selected mutant stocks from McClintock's collection that we will maintain, the rest were sent to NSSL for archival purposes. We have pedigree information in electronic form for McClintock's stocks. This and information about other donated collections is available at URL: . We expect to receive several additional large accessions of stocks from maize geneticists within the upcoming year. We strongly urge all cooperators with mutants (old or new) that are not presently in our collection, to contribute seeds to us. This will insure that mutants you have will be maintained and shared with the maize research community.

We set up a WWW home page in March of 1995 that allows us to receive requests over the 'Web' from users with software such as Mosaic or Netscape. We are continuing to enter data into our internal database. In addition to information about our stocks, we also have the reprint collections of M. M. Rhoades, G. F. Sprague and E. G. Anderson. Information about these reprints is accessible from our growing internal database.

We have been continuing our collaboration with Ed Coe's efforts in the growing Maize Genome Database (MaizeDB). This is part of the Plant Genome Database (PGD) effort being sponsored by the National Agricultural Library. Information about our stocks is presently in MaizeDB (and therefore also with the PGD at NAL) allowing users access to information about available maize genetic stocks. Available maize genetic stocks have also been listed in GRIN (with links to detailed information contained in MaizeDB and PGD). Stock information is accessible from our web site.

A list of available stocks will continue to be published annually as part of the Maize Genetics Cooperation € Newsletter. This year the stock list has many new additions. When making requests please give both the stock number and the genotype.

Marty Sachs                        Philip Stinard                       Janet Day Jackson
Director                               Curator                                 Research Specialist
 

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