Nomenclatural standards of modern Russian potato cultivars preserved at the VIR herbarium (WIR): A new approach to cultivar genepool registration in a genebank

VIR is creating a collection of nomenclature standards for cultivars of different crops in line with the provisions of the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (ICNCP). The nomenclatural standards are designed in the form of a herbarium sample in cooperation with the authors of cultivars, who select plant material for each cultivar in the experimental field of their organization and forward it to the scientific herbarium together with the accompanying documents. Registering of herbarium specimen in the scientific herbarium is followed by the publication of nomenclatural standards. The article presents a new VIR genebank strategy for registering plant material of domestic cultivars received from breeders, which includes the design of nomenclatural standards; the development of a genetic passport of a cultivar using DNA samples from the plant delivered to the scientific herbarium; and application of biotechnological methods for keeping explants (isolated from the acquired plant material as buds or meristems) alive. The proposed integrated approach makes it possible to document cultivars not only with the help of nomenclatural standards, but also with the use of molecular-genetic methods, as well as to save genotyped specimens, transferred to herbarium, in in vitro and in cryo collections. This approach is applicable to any vegetatively propagated crop. The article summarizes the first results of our proposed strategy using modern domestic potato cultivars as an example. Collection, transfer and preparation of plant material for nomenclatural standards of potato varieties are specific; this article explains our protocol for this work. The implementation of this strategy in 2018-2020 led to the designation of nomenclatural standards for 66 Russian potato varieties and elaboration of their genetic passports, which are presented in a series of articles included into issues Nos.3 and 4, Volume 3, of the journal “Plant Biotechnology and Breeding”, containing an overview of methodological approaches to registration of modern domestic cultivars in the VIR collection. DNA samples obtained from the plant material provided by the cultivar authors for nomenclatural standard designation will continue to be used as a source of information on the genetic potential of a cultivar through the expansion of the list of DNA markers and the application of new genetic technologies.