The U.S. Department of Agriculture wants to move two of the nation’s most important seed banks from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign — even as some experts raise concerns that change could harm corn and soybean research.
The Maize Genetics Cooperation Stock Center includes 100,000 corn stocks representing genetic mutants, some that were collected as long as 100 years ago and are irreplaceable. The National Soybean Germplasm Collection is the only public soybean seed bank in the country and holds nearly the entire crop’s genetic diversity.
Samples from the collections at the University of Illinois are shipped to scientists around the world who are studying crop yield and disease resistance.
“Colleagues in Europe and Africa and Asia and Latin America, they also contribute to this resource and they also use that resource a lot,” said University of Illinois crop sciences professor Martin Bohn, who uses the maize stock center for his research.
Both collections have been housed on the university’s campus for decades, but the USDA is proposing moving the maize center to Ames, Iowa, and the soybean collection to Columbia, Missouri.
“Why do we want to break something that works?” Bohn asked.
He worries the proposed locations don’t have the physical infrastructure or experienced personnel to properly care for the collections.
“The material in the stock center, this is very special, and you need to have expertise,” he said. “You need to know how to handle these.”
The seeds are stored in cold storage under precise conditions and are planted and grown to harvest new seeds on a regular basis, Bohn said. The new locations would likely need to build new facilities to house the collections.
“It’s going to be very expensive,” said Brian Diers, an emeritus professor of crop sciences at the University of Illinois, “because they’ll have to recreate all the facilities in another state that are already here.”
In a statement, a USDA spokesperson said the proposal aligns with the organizational restructuring of the agency directed by President Donald Trump and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, including the Research, Education and Economics mission area and was decided “after careful thought and consideration from agency leaders.”
“The restructuring is also an example of REE embracing commitment to USDA’s reorganization plan by relocating many REE positions to areas closer to the farmers and ranchers we serve, while also creating collaborative and intact work environments for employees,” the spokesperson said.
Illinois was the top soybean producing state in 2025, with more than 600 million bushels, according to USDA’s crop production summary, and the state was second in corn production, behind Iowa, producing 2.3 billion bushels last year.
More details on how the collections will be moved and stored will be available in the near future, according to the USDA.
Making sense of the move
Vivian Bernau, who previously worked at the USDA curating a major maize collection and is now preservation director at Seed Savers Exchange, said she hasn’t heard a good argument from the federal agency on why the collections should be moved.
“Other than they’re in a blue state is, I think, a theme that has arisen multiple times,” Bernau said.
But both seed banks are “incredibly important” for research, Bernau said.
“They support the activities of private companies, of university researchers, of individual breeders,” she said. “They provide materials that help to advance crop development and maintain our excellence in crop production across the country.”
And Bernau, like researchers at the University of Illinois, said there are potential risks to moving the materials across state lines.
“I think that those actions will be incredibly disruptive to the regular maintenance of the gene banks themselves and also to the research that those gene banks support across the country,” she said.
For the soybean collection, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign offers a unique location for the seeds to be replenished, Bernau said, providing an environment where plants from the far northern Midwest and southern Midwest grow well. Columbia, Missouri, does not offer the same range, she said.
Of the two facilities, it makes more sense to move the maize collection, Bernau said.
“I think there are some benefits to be seen by combining the Maize Genetic Stock Center with the other maize genetic resources that are maintained at the North Central Regional Plant Introduction Station in Ames, Iowa,” she said.
The station, like the maize center and the soybean collection, is also part of the National Plant Germplasm System. The station in Iowa curates several crops, including maize, according to the USDA’s website.
“For us, I think it’d be good,” said Kendall Lamkey, the associate dean of facilities and operations at Iowa State University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. ”The genetics co-op [cooperation] center that’s in Urbana would be a nice addition to what we have here already.”
But the Plant Introduction Station in Iowa is underfunded, like the rest of the germplasm system, Lamkey said.
“I think if the move came with more funding that could be a good thing for everyone, if it happened that way,” he said.
Potential risks
The USDA has not yet specified exactly where it’s proposing to move the seed banks.
Experts think the soybean collection would be moved to the University of Missouri in Columbia. The university declined to comment on the potential move.
It’s also unclear if the maize center would be relocated to the North Central Regional Plant Introduction Station or to Iowa State University’s campus, according to Steve Harris, chair of the university’s Department of Plant Pathology, Entomology and Microbiology.
Iowa State has the expertise to take on the collection, Harris said, but he admits he’s torn on the potential move.
“I can see the benefits to Iowa State, and I can see the benefits to the college by having it nearby and combined with the Plant Introduction Station and their resources,” he said. “But by the same token, I can also see the impacts it would have at Illinois.”
He’s been involved in moving precious genetic material before, he said, and it’s not a decision that should be made lightly.
“It’s not like you can just get insurance and replace it if it’s lost, right?” he said. “They’re irreplaceable stock.”
A truck breaking down or a freezer faltering could risk the loss of materials, he said.
Bohn worries having collections go “offline” during the move or while a facility is built could be catastrophic.
“If the collection were moved despite these shortcomings, then the collection will be, I think, destroyed,” he said.
This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.
