Ithaca, New York
August 29, 2002

The Public Seed Initiative (PSI), an agricultural outreach program based at Cornell University's Department of Plant Breeding, will hold its annual Field Day Thursday, Sept. 5, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on two Tompkins County, N.Y., research plots near Cornell.

The locations will be the Thompson Vegetable Research Farm in Freeville and the Varna research farm, located off Route 366, both part of the plant breeding department.

The Field Day will begin at 9 a.m. at the Thompson farm, where demonstration and evaluation plots will showcase specialty crops and new public varieties being developed (including open-pollinated varieties) that will aid organic growers. On view will be new disease-resistant tomatoes, flavorful melons, and winter and summer squash resistant to powdery mildew. In addition, there will be a demonstration of the Mobile Seed Processing Unit, which processes and cleans vegetable seed for retention by farmers. Lunch will be provided at noon. At 1:30 p.m. the event will move to the Varna research farm.

A day earlier, on Wednesday, Sept. 4, a Vegetable Breeding Training Workshop will be held at the Varna research farm, from 2 to 5 p.m.

The public is invited to attend these events, but registration is required for the field day and the training workshop. For registration, information or directions to the Thompson and Varna research farm, contact Mark Henning of Cornell's Department of Plant Breeding at (607) 255-1241 or <mjh7@cornell.edu>.

PSI is a project of Cornell, the Northeast Organic Farming Association--N.Y., the Farmers Cooperative Genome Project, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Plant Genetics Resource Unit in Geneva, N.Y. Funding for PSI is provided by a grant from the USDA Initiative for Future Agriculture and Food Systems.