Enhancing germplasm utilization to meet specific users needs through interactive stratified core selections
2003
Mahalakshmi, V. (International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Patancheru, Andhra Pradesh (India)) | van Hintum, T.J.L. | Ortiz, R.
Germplasm collections of major crop plants continue to grow in number and size around the world. When agriculture became intensive there was concern of losing genetic diversity forever, and the world community decided to support collec tion and conservation of the germplasm of major cultivated crops. Today, however, the return for these investments is being assessed by the use of these germplasm resources in breeding programmes. The very large size and heterogeneous nature of germplasm collections can hinder the efforts to increase their use in plant improvement. These germplasm collections are often a result of historical events and arbitrary decisions, collecting missions and specific research programmes resulting in over-representation of certain material, whereas other types of material can be under-represented (Grenier et al. 2000a, b). Core collections (Frankel and Brown 1984; Brown 1989a, b; van Hintum et al. 2000) which represent with a minimum of repetitiveness, the genetic diversity of crop species and its wild relatives were proposed to enhance the use of germplasm held in the collections. The core collection should contain about 10% of the total number of accessions, such that it represents the possible diversity in the collection. Many genebank curators have been following this idea and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has also assembled core collections to reflect the diversity in its mandate crops (Grenier 2000; Upadhyaya et al. 2001).
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