Spending only $6,000 to get $100,000 worth of research each year is a big incentive for members to participate in the Nursery Technology Cooperative (NTC). That is one of the reasons that the cooperative has been going strong since 1982. Private companies and federal, state, and tribal agencies come together to conduct research into ways to improve the success of planting seedlings for reforestation.

Project Leader Robin Rose and Associate Director Diane Haase (both of Forest Science), along with graduate students, administer a variety of projects that relate to the concerns of the cooperators. Particular projects may be suggested by either the cooperators or scientists in the College of Forestry. Cooperators meet yearly to bring up issues, and the NTC staff develop ways to address them. On the other hand, NTC staff may also come up with a new idea that might be useful and propose it to the cooperators, asking if they would be interested in participating in a project. Currently the focus for several projects is fertilizer research.

Use of fertilizer on outplanted seedlings is potentially very valuable in field performance. Seedlings might gain a sufficient growth advantage to let them break through competing brush species. That advantage might even continue into the tree's later years, making it grow to harvestable size more quickly. Therefore researchers are testing fertilizer treatments both in the nursery and in the field, from Gold Beach on the southern Oregon coast, to the Warm Springs Indian Reservation on the east side of the Oregon Cascades, to Olympia, Washington, at the southern tip of Puget Sound. The researchers are testing not just different fertilizer formulas but also different application timings, different application rates, and different placement (e.g., in the hole or at the side of the tree).

In general, NTC projects are designed to improve nursery management, seedling quality, integrated pest management, and outplanting performance. Different growing media and means of sterilizing soil to rid it of pathogens and weed seed are two areas investigated recently. The cooperative conducted herbicide testing for more than a decade and has now pulled the results together into a single proceedings article.

Such testing benefits the cooperating nurseries even when results are negative. For instance, a few years ago, cooperators were interested in an antitranspirant that offered the hope of protecting seedlings from water loss following outplanting. Research showed the antitranspirant to be ineffective; that knowledge saved the cooperators from spending money unnecessarily by buying a product that does not work.

Savings are not the only advantage of being a member of the cooperative. For many, an even greater benefit is the opportunity to interact at meetings, trade information freely, learn from each other about new things they are trying or plan to try, and help each other avoid redundant effort. Haase comments that the annual meeting feels like a group of friends together in an atmosphere of sharing information. In addition to the annual meeting in the fall, the cooperative holds a specialized integrated pest management meeting early each new year that is more narrowly focused for nursery managers.

The researchers also benefit. The graduate students involved in projects make contacts with agencies all over Washington and Oregon, giving them an advantage in seeking jobs after graduation. Haase herself joined the cooperative as a graduate student in 1989, becoming staff on completing her degree in 1991. For her, the benefit has been the variety inherent in her job. She works with many projects and many people, in the field, in the nursery, in the lab, and in the office. The work has never been boring.

The NTC is one of only two nursery cooperatives in the United States. Its cutting edge research has given it an international reputation, and incoming graduate students say that they came to OSU because it is the best place to be to study reforestation.