Status and Management of Plant Genetic Resources in Vietnam

Since 1987, with the issue of the provisional regulations on genetic resources management, the conservation of Plant Genetic Resources for food and Agriculture (PGR) has been considered a national task. A small working unit consisting of just 5 people, belonging to Vietnam Agricultural Science Institute, was then formed to start implementing this national regular task. Latter, in 1996, on the basic of this unit, the Center of Plant Genetic Resources belonging to Vietnam Agricultural Science Institute was established, which had the mandate to coordinate all the activities relating to PGR throughout the country. A national network of PGR conservation was also established with 20 member institutions, each is responsible for ex situ conservation of certain crop genetic resources. More recently, in 2005 in order to better coordinate the national activities and programs towards effective conservation and sustainable use of PGR, the government of Vietnam found, asanup-gradation of the former Plant Genetic Resources Center, the Plant Resources Center(PRC) as an autonomous research institute under Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Together with all this institutional development, capacity of institutions involved have also been strengthened, and facilities for ex situ conservation of PGR at the National Network members improved. During the last 15 years, activities in all the areas of PGR conservation and sustainable use were promoted. The most significant achievements however were obtained in the area of ex situ conservation with the establishment of the National Genebank and of ex situ collections of various crops maintained by the National Network member institutions distributed all over the country. A significant number of germplasm accessions of different species were collected and maintained ex situ, bringing the total accessions number maintained ex situ to over 25,000. The characterization and information activities were also expanded. All the around 18,000 accessions maintained in the National Genebank were characterized and preliminarily evaluated, and a database containing all the relevant information was developed, maintained and shared using GMS. Each year over 1,000 germplasm accessions were accessed for different use purposes. Attention to in situ conservation was also increased during the last 15 years. Different projects were conducted with increased number of on-farm conservation sites and participation with increased number of local crop varieties recovered and reintroduced into production. Some varieties with special quality has been developed and registered. Nevertheless, there are still important weakness in all the active areas, namely poor storage facility and inadequate evaluation of the ex situ collections, limited participation and lack of methodology for in situ conservation, lack of supportive policies, limited human and financial source etc. To introduce a plant genetic resources from PRC in Vietnam, it should need to conduct cooperative research between Korea and Vietnam on characterization as well as collection and management of local crop in Vietnam.