Dr. Reed, far right, in Kazakhstan.  

The time in Kazakhstan was used to review the FSU project on the “Preservation of germplasm of fruit and berry crops in Kazakhstan” with Dr. Irina Kovalchuk and Dr. Svetlana Kushnarenko, Kazakh Research Institute of Horticulture and Viniculture and Institute of Plant Physiology.  This project is in its fourth year.  We visited one of the former weapons sites at Stepnogorsk, near Astana.  We met with Yury Rufov, President of the Biomedpreparat-Engineering Center/ Techno Park SIA and several scientists.  This Institute is doing soil analysis at the present time but has equipment and personnel for genetic analysis.  We will try to incorporate these scientists into our project or a future project.  In Almaty, the Institute of Plant Physiology has been very cooperative with our project and has allowed Dr. Kovalchuk to remodel a large first floor laboratory as well as a basement room for cold storage and a growth room.  These changes will allow the project to make significant progress.  Formerly there were no growth rooms or cold storage and cultures were grown in a fume hood with lights.  The laboratory space was spread over several labs but now is consolidated into one large room.  I also visited the Kazakh Research Institute of Horticulture and Viniculture where in vitro cold-storage work is progressing.  We discussed the collection and exchange of apricot seeds recently collected in the Almaty area. We also discussed upcoming publication of data from the project.  This project has had a significant impact on these two research centers and has provided employment for several former weapons scientists.