Since the 1930s, the USDA (. Department of Agriculture) Forest Service’s International Institute of Tropical Forestry (the Institute) has studied mahogany and its management. In the 1960s, . Lamb, the author of the classic book on mahogany (1966), was an Institute collaborator. Before gene flow and genetic erosion became popular terms, my predecessor Frank Wadsworth established a gene bank at the Luquillo Experimental Forest. This project required two expeditions to Central America in successive years (1958 and 1959) to collect seed from 20 populations of big-leaf and Pacific coast mahogany. These provenances plus small-leaf mahogany were planted throughout Puerto Rico in a replicated, large-scale transplant study
