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. and the world.  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.

Russell Ranch Vineyard in Davis, CA.

The Russell Ranch vineyard is 100-acres on the UC Davis campus. It set a national standard for grapevine foundation material in the United States at a rigorous new level. All vines planted at Russell Ranch must go through a testing scheme designated “PROTOCOL 2010”. To qualify as Protocol 2010 plant material, the vines must have been generated using microshoot tip culture and be tested for an extensive list of pathogens. The first vines to qualify as Protocol 2010 vines were rootstocks, and were planted in 2011. There are now over 1000 vines planted at Russell Ranch that are starting to produce plant material for grapevine nurseries for a new, clean source of planting material for growers nationwide.