At The Pub Club this week Gregg Howe shared a recent issue with Columbia-0 seeds sold by Lehle seed company being contaminated with other accessions.  Here is an excerpt from the arabidopsis.com website regarding this issue:

January 4, 2016
IMPORTANT NOTICE: Cat no. WT-02 Columbia Seed Sales Temporarily Halted – Columbia wild type seed stock regeneration initiation

This is to inform our customers, that LEHLE SEEDS will be regenerating our cat. no. WT-02 Columbia (alias Col-0) Arabidopsis thaliana seed stock during the first two quarters of 2016.  This necessary action is being taken, because on December 18, 2015, LEHLE SEEDS was alerted by a customer that one of our recent seed lots of WT-02 Columbia (alias Col-0) wild type seed included a small percentage of seedlings whose morphology was dissimilar to Columbia.  As a precaution, LEHLE SEEDS immediately halted any further sales of cat. no. WT-02 Columbia wild type as initial investigation suggests this is something other than seed contamination. 

As we discussed, many of us have experienced problems in receiving seeds from others that were not what they were supposed to be.  To save ourselves the head ache of finding out multiple experiments later that we are working with the wrong material or the embarrassment of sharing incorrect material with someone else, here are some resources for “best practices” in regards to handling of genetic material.