Present Status of Securing Genetic Diversity of Plant Genetic Resources Collected/Introduced from Abroad

Plant genetic resources are very important as the basic materials for agricultural biotechnology to develop the new cultivars, to explore new functional materials, and to utilize the useful genes. The objectives of this review are to discuss the importance of securing the genetic diversity of plant genetic resources and to review the current status of securing the genetic diversity of plant genetic resources from abroad by introduction and collection. We do not only persist a plenty of plant genetic diversity but also have a few crops originating in Korea. Securing the genetic diversity containing appropriate traits for diverse research purposes is necessary because we have very limited genetic diversity for diverse needs. We have collected and introduced a total of 9,326 accessions with an average of 3,100 accessions a year from abroad for recent three years. Accessions originating South America including Argentina on 2005, royalty related crops produced from Europe and U.S.A. on 2006 and landrace vegetable crops explored at the Bulgaria and Myanmar on 2007 were investigated by joint research. International cooperation projects with Russia and Uzbekistan from 1996 to present have been valuable sources for collecting and introducing diverse plant genetic resources. 8,684 and 5,848 accessions were collected and introduced from Russia and Uzbekistan, respectively. It is necessary, at this moment, to extent collecting activities from the countries near those two countries. 1,517 accessions which are originated in Korea but not conserved in RDA genebank were reintroduced from USDA-ARS NPGS. It has been constantly increasing to introduce plant genetic resources from International Agricultural Research Institutes such as International Rice Research Institute. A total of approximately 155,000 seed accessions have been conserved in RDA genebank on the basis of January, 2008. These are consisted of 32% of domestic collections and 68% of abroad collections, respectively. The number of cultivars developed in RDA using these plant genetic resources is a total of 2,084 cultivars of which 67% were developed using foreign collection, in a year of 2005 basis. It is expected that an ascertaining plant genetic resource will have been an issue of global concern. It is necessary, therefore, to secure plant genetic resources as early as possible. Collection activities targeting to royalty paid crops has been conducting for the near term. Besides that, it is necessary to extend the collection activities to secure the pan-global plant genetic resource from tropical and sub-tropical countries, and/or south pole to correspond a global climate change for the mid- and long term.