Foundation Plant Services, University of California, Davis
Foundation Plant Services (FPS) is a self-supporting service department in the College of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences at the University of California, Davis. The FPS grape clean plant program was created in 1958 as a cooperative effort between the university, the USDA-ARS, and the wine and grape industry of California.
FPS produces, tests, maintains and distributes premium disease-tested grapevine propagating material in the U.S. FPS is also the home of the largest grape importation facility in the U.S., using state-of-the-art pathogen testing and disease elimination technology to successfully advance foreign grape selections through quarantine.
FPS’ current Classic Foundation Vineyard collection contains the germplasm for the California Grapevine Registration & Certification Program. FPS plant material serves as primary source material for commercial increase of grapevines for the grape industry. The program is primarily geared toward the distribution of small quantities of commercially-important propagating stock to nurseries and others, who increase the stock for sale to commercial producers of grapes and grape products. The FPS collection currently contains over 750 grape varieties and 1200 clones (selections), which represent all regions of the United States and the world.
FPS is the headquarters for the NCPN for Grapes and in 2010 began development of the primary NCPN foundation vineyard collection at a site on the UC Davis campus called ‘Russell Ranch’. Plant material for this new foundation vineyard is qualified using guidelines specified in the ‘2010 Protocol’, which adopts a new stricter standard recommended in 2009 by the Board of the NCPN for Grapes.
