Introduction
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA),
Agricultural Research Service's (ARS) National Plant Germplasm System
(NPGS) currently maintains over 56 985 accessions of mostly
economically important vascular plants. It also coordinates the
activities of more than 25 USDA and other seed and clonal germplasm sites and
interacts with the international germplasm community and scientific public
through the Germplasm Resources Information Network, GRIN-Global. The GRIN-Global
database contains information on all genetic resources preserved by NPGS,
including accessions of both domestic and foreign origin. Though the
emphasis is on major, minor, or potential crops and their wild and weedy
relatives, many other categories of plants are represented including
ornamentals and some rare and endangered plants. A range of
data--including passport, taxonomic, descriptor, observation, evaluation,
and inventory data--for each germplasm accession is available in GRIN-Global. The
taxonomic data providing the overall organization for germplasm accessions
in GRIN-Global are the focus of these pages. For information on other aspects of GRIN-Global or NPGS see Janick (1989) or consult the NPGS home page.