News

USDA partners with Smithsonian Institution

USDA says a scientific partnership with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History will help protect U.S. plant health from invasive species.

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Smithsonian Institution, a collaboration that will advance the scientific community’s knowledge and resource collection of exotic insect species as well as weed seeds and other contaminant plant parts.

The agency says the agreement provides USDA entomologists and botanists laboratory space in the museum and access to the Smithsonian’s collections and libraries, and in turn, these scientists will invest their expertise in the curation and enhancement of those collections.