Carbon Credits, Switch Grass Genetics

I have come across a couple bits of information pertinant to Productive Conservation On Working Lands:

• The University Of Minnesota Extension is holding a workshop on carbon credits fom Minnesota farmers next week. For more information go here .

• In the recent article of Plant Chat distrtibuted by the NRCS, was an interesting article on Switch grass genetics. Michael Casler, a plant geneticist who works at the ARS U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center in Madison compared samples of switchgrass taken from virgin prairie reminants across the country to modern improved cultivars. The results were surprising, in that the samples were genetically very similar. According to this research the risk of contaminating the genetic pool of local switchgrass populations with improved varieties may be less than previosly thought.