LANDSCAPE PLANT DEVELOPMENT CENTER'S RESEARCH STATIONS

Oregon Research Station

• Donated to LPDC in 1999 by the J. Frank Schmidt Family Charitable Trust
• 24 acres located in Aurora, Oregon
• Ideal growing location for our first and second generation hybrids
• Long term plant evaluation

Minnesota Research Station

• Donated to LPDC in 2006 by Robert and Phyllis Engstrom of The Robert Engstrom Companies in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
• 6.75 acres located in Lake Elmo
• Will serve as Center’s primary cold climate growing facility for second generation hybrids.

MAJOR COOPERATIVE EFFORTS

The Center provides funds to hire research technicians for these cooperative efforts at academic institutions and arboreta. In turn, those institutions leverage the use of their existing facilities and, in many cases, the expertise of their scientists to help conduct the research.

Washington State University-Puyallup

• The Center works in partnership with WSU and Rita Hummel, associate scientist at the WSU Research and Extension Center in Puyallup, to develop varieties of trees and plants that are tolerant of environmental and biological stresses.
• First generation progenies of Pyrus interspecies hybrids are growing at WSU Puyallup, as are some of the Center's first generation interspecies of hybrids of Acer. WSU's greenhouses are also used to propogate many of the Center's first generation hybrids from its other breeding efforts.
• The Center provides funding to provide part of the salaries for technicians that are working with Dr. Hummel on the project.

North Dakota State University (Fargo)

• Cooperative efforts to utilize biotechnological techniques were started in 2005 with Dr. Wenhao (David) Dai at NDSU.
• The Center has provided funding for the salary of a technician for that effort and, through that support, we leverage the expertise of Dr. Dai and the use of the excellent laboratory facilities in the Plant Science Department.

The Morton Arboretum

• The Center hired Dr. Susan Wiegrefe as a post doctoral fellow and she started our breeding efforts with Acer and Carpinus (Hornbeam). For three years she traveled and collected pollen and making interspecific crosses of Acer and Carpinus using mature plants in the collections of The National Arboretum, The Morris Arboretum, The Arnold Arboretum, The Holden Arboretum and The Morton Arboretum.
• When Dr. Wiegrefe accepted a position as a tree breeder at The Morton Arboretum, we entered into an agreement with that arboretum to continue that effort as a cooperative project.