PLANT GENETIC RESOURCES FOR FOOD AND AGRICULTURE (PGRFA) - MAINTENANCE AND RESEARCH

Summary: Plant genetic resources play a major role for global food security. The most significant and widespread means of conserving plant genetic resources is ex situ conservation. Most conserved accessions are kept in specialized facilities known as genebanks. World-wide 7.4 million accessions are stored in 1 750 ex situ genebanks. One of the ten largest ex situ collections of our globe is located at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) in Gatersleben, Germany, safeguarding about 150 000 accessions from 3 212 plant species and 776 genera comprising wild and primitive forms, landraces as well as old and more recent cultivars. Since the majority of genebank holdings globally are stored as seed, seed storability is of exceptional importance for germplasm preservation. At IPK, research on seed longevity was initiated for a range of crops maintained over decades. Variation between and within crop species was detected and genetic analyses were initiated. Results obtained for several crop species are