Introduction
The Department of Horticulture currently consists of 23 faculty members with 16 housed in Saunders Hall, two at VBI on campus, three at Hampton Roads, one at Winchester and one at Painter. The total FTE for research is 9.0 with 6.8 on campus (2 at VBI) and 2.2 at the experiment stations. Of the 23 faculty, 19 have research appointments ranging from 5 to 100%. The breakdown for commodities is 2.8 in the area of nursery crops/floriculture, 0.5 in fruit crops, 2.0 in vegetable crops and 3.7 in cross-commodity/basic. The breakdown generally reflects the relative importance of the different commodities in the state economy, except that fruit crops is underrepresented due to recent retirements. Nine technical staff support research activity on campus. In addition, we have one adjunct faculty member currently working at VBI and integrated into the strawberry genomics project. Cross-commodity research is a catch-all that includes work with Arabidopsis as a model system, development of potato germplasm through biotechnology, the core facility (microarrays, genomics) at VBI and faculty who work on crops in more than one commodity (Nowak, Veilleux).

Five research laboratories, plant tissue culture and genetics, seed physiology and biotechnology, plant molecular biology, plant nutrition and fruit quality, occupying 3639 sq ft, are located in Saunders Hall. Through the integration of two Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) research faculty, one adjunct professor to our program, and collaborative research projects involving other VBI faculty, our graduate students and faculty have direct access to two analytical laboratories (including GC-MS and an array of molecular biology analytical equipment) and bioinformatics facilities at VBI. VBI will be relocate to two new buildings now under construction, situated in proximity to Saunders Hall and our greenhouse facilities. VBI also provides office space to the jointly supervised graduate students. Through collaborative projects, and/or fee for service arrangements, we have access to most of the modern analytical facilities on campus, including the Fralin Biotechnology Center (http://www.biotech.vt.edu/).

Farm
The College Farm Operation is composed of six tracts of land totaling 3,200 acres, all located in the Blacksburg area. The Department of Horticulture field experiments are located in historic Kentland Farm (http://www.vaes.vt.edu/colleges/kentland/collegefarm.html), with 400 acres of field plots and over 600 acres of wild life sanctuary, 20 min from campus. The Farm accommodates tree fruit orchards (primarily apple, peaches and pears), small fruit trials (primarily strawberry) and vegetable research plots under traditional and heavy life mulch no-till permanent bed system. Since 2002, we also initiated organic horticulture research program and in 2003 additional five acres was allocated for the organic transition program. Our facilities include two general-purpose buildings located near orchards and site irrigation stations. The current Farm administration building has been allocated to us for the organic horticulture program (anticipated occupancy, 2005).
Greenhouses

Virginia Tech greenhouse facilities consist of 36,000 sq ft glasshouse space with environmentally controlled compartments and approximately 16,000 sq ft fiberglass covered hoop houses, without environmental controls. Our eepartment is the largest user of this space, 9,700 sq ft glasshouse space and 11, 000 sq ft fiberglass. The facilities (greenhouse space allocation to individual departments in particular) are managed by the University Greenhouse Committee, representing the major users. The greenhouse manager (responsible for the entire complex) is a technical position within Horticulture.

Virginia Tech Urban Horticulture Center
The Urban Horticulture Center (UHC) of Virginia Tech, located about three miles from campus on Prices Fork Road, was established in 1989. The purpose of the UHC is to provide an indoor work area, field space, and equipment for research that supports the nursery and landscape industry as well as other commodities. There are currently eight different faculty members with projects at the site. The site, a former research orchard, initially included about 4 acres of land, and a 32’ x 50’ research building. Recent additions to the building include a 32’ x 25’ laboratory, rest room, 10’ x 12’ walk-in cooler, and a 20’ x 45’ equipment storage building. We have also recently added a new graveled pad for container growing. Unheated poly houses for winter protection of container-grown plants as well as a pot-in-pot growing area exist. There is an adjacent 10 acres available for expansion as the need dictates, of which one acre was recently fenced to provide growing space to evaluate new plant introductions collected on plant expedition trips as well as from breeding programs within the department.

Off-campus Research Facilities
Off-campus Horticulture research facilities are located at the Agriculture Research and Extension Centers at Eastern Shore – vegetable research plots and a food quality laboratory, Hampton Roads – field and container research areas for nursery production, landscape management and urban tree care, a greenhouse designated to phytoremediation research, and two research laboratories in a newly completed building, Southern Piedmont - grapes and small fruit (blueberry and brambles) research plots and access to the greenhouse and laboratory space, Winchester (Alison H. Smith) - tree fruit and grape orchards, modern pesticide residue handling facilities, greenhouse and analytical laboratories, including a newly established molecular biology lab. Virginia Beach AREC also maintains two arboreta (Tidewater Arboretum and Utility Arboretum), demonstration gardens (Bayscape Garden, All American Selections Trial Garden, Perennial Garden, Seashore Garden and Accessibility Garden) used for research, extension and outreach programs.