World Ex Situ Collections of Germplasm

At the time of Vavilov, the concept of active germplasm conservation had not truly been considered. While Vavilov accumulated valuable germplasm collections, as did Government Agencies in the United States and elsewhere, these were used by plant breeders as sources of useful characters, and seeds were not positively maintained for any length of time and thus conserved for perpetuity. William Bateson of the then John Innes Horticultural Institute (UK) may have been the first to hint at the need for the longer term maintenance of germplasm when in 1923 he chaired a Ministry of Agriculture Committee dealing with fruit trees. One of the proposals of this committee was to develop collections of old commercial varieties of fruit trees which even at that time were being rapidly replaced by new varieties.