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Article: The Fort Knox of Exotic Weed Diseases.
- Article from:
- Agricultural Research
- Article date:
- May 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 U.S. Government Printing Office. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A casual observer might think the five greenhouses that Frederick, Maryland, plant pathologist William L. Bruckart visits each day are a bit unusual. Rather than housing something expected, like rare, tropical flowers, the greenhouses are home to an unruly tangle of noxious weeds.
Actually, "unruly" is a bit misleading. The weeds, in fact, are all potted and neatly lined up along tables inside the greenhouses. Each greenhouse is part of a microbial containment (quarantine) facility operated by the Agricultural Research Service's Foreign Disease-Weed Science Research Unit in Frederick.
There, inside the facility, Bruckart and colleagues like plant ...