Dear all, Recently, I received an email from Andrew Groover(Research Geneticist. US Forest Service. Davis CA) asking for assistance in obtaining germplasm for a new project. Andrew will be glad to provide more information if anyone of you is interested in the project. Below, I am forwarding you Andrew's message. Thank you very much for your help. Sincerely, *#################* Dear Colleague, As part of a new project funded by the US Department of Energy, we are examining the role of ploidy changes in developing superior hybrid poplar for bioenergy production. We are currently seeking to establish the frequency of triploidy and aneuploidy in F1 interspecific hybrids in traditional breeding programs. We are writing to ask if you can provide us a small amount of leaf tissue (less than 0.5g) from F1 individuals from any of the species combinations listed below. Ideally, we would like to have between as few as 6 and as many as 24 F1s from each full sib family, and if available tissue from the parents. We can process up to 20 families from your collections. Trees for which some phenotypic information is available would be highest priority, as would be trees that you suspect might be triploid/aneuploid (based on growth phenotype or sterility). For the tissue we receive from you, we will use low-coverage “next generation” sequencing to develop a molecular karyotype for each individual. We will make the karyotype as well as SNP marker genotypes available to you for the submitted samples. If you wish, you may code the identities of the samples but we do need to know the relationships among samples (i.e. which samples are from the same family and which samples are from parents vs F1s). If you are interested in participating in the project, please contact Andrew Groover (agroover(a)fs.fed.us <mailto:agroover@fs.fed.us> 530-759-1738). We will establish with you what genotypes should be sequenced, and provide you with collection instructions and vials, and a shipping account. We very much appreciate your assistance. Sincerely, Luca Comai and Isabelle Henry (UC Davis) Andrew Groover (US Forest Service) *Female Parent* *Male Parent* trichocarpa deltoides deltoides trichocarpa maximowiczii deltoides deltoides maximowiczii maximowiczii nigra nigra maximowiczii nigra deltoides deltoides nigra ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Andrew Groover Research Geneticist US Forest Service Davis CA 530-759-1738 agroover(a)fs.fed.us -- --