What Are Tomato And Pepper Accession Seeds

This blog will be about accession tomato and peppers seeds. An Accession is a group of related plant material from a single species which is collected at one time from a specific location. Each accession is an attempt to capture the diversity of present in a given population of plants. Accessions have a unique identifier, an accession number, which is used to maintain associated information in the GRIN database. This is similar to call numbers that libraries use, except instead of books, this how they manage plants. This definition comes from Ohio State University.

Accession Seeds

Accession seeds come from The United States Department of Agriculture. They collected these seeds over many decades from all around the world. Also known as GRIN Global and are put into U.S. National Plant Germplasm System. They collect and preserve these tomato and peppers seeds along with other fruit, vegetable and flower seeds as well. The seeds that were collected and conserved for studies of growth habits and production along with preservation. There are several of these facilities spread throughout the United States that house many varieties of accession seeds.

What Accession Numbers Look Like

What some accession numbers look like. Some accession numbers given to the seeds will start with letters first, then followed by numbers. I took a picture to show what some of the variety of letters and numbers the government uses in labeling. The accessions we have obtained are from other seed vendors along with older collectors and from the United States Department of Agriculture. Some letters for these seeds are ARS, CAP, CGN, CLN, GRIF, GRN, IPK, and PI. Also, these kinds might have the original name of the item attached to them as well.  An example of this is PI441598, and the name with that number is Peach Tiger pepper.

My View On Accession Pepper And Tomato Seeds

This is a great program GRIN has to preserve these great seed varieties from all around the world. Some of these seeds are Rare, Obscure Heirloom tomato and pepper seeds that can not be found or purchased anywhere else. Lastly, some growers can obtain these seed germplasms from GRIN for free, and they pay for the shipping by filling out a request form they have provided on the site. We will be growing some of these accessions we have this year to be added in the fall of 2022.