Status of Management for Plant Genetic Resources in Georgia

Georgian academy of agricultural science in 2007 was established for conservation of the biological diversity and genetic resources such as grapevines and orchard trees in field, Georgia has very rich biodiversity because it is spread geomorphologically regions which have very diverse climate character. Among the perennial crops, Georgia is one of the origin countries on grapevine. The other crops such as tea, citrus, pome fruits, stone fruits and nuts are rich in diversity. Although Georgia is abundant in wild type plants and local varieties, they do not have any facility for their conservation. Some seed genetic resources were kept in facility of N. I. Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry, Russian Federation. The main annual crops are wheat, barley, corn, sunflower, potato, vegetables and bean, etc. Since 2007, with the issue of the national regulations on genetic resources management, the conservation of plant genetic resources (PGR) for food and agriculture has been considered a national task. During the last 7 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. The total number of accessions for ex situ conservation were over 25,000 in Georgia. The characterization and information of genetic resources were also expanded. All the around 4,000 accessions maintained in the National field Genebank were characterized and preliminarily evaluated, and a database containing all the relevant information was developed, maintained and shared using Excel sheet. Each year over 3.000 germplasm accessions were accessed for different purposes. Attention to in situ conservation was also increased during the last years. Different projects were conducted with increased number of on-farm conservation sites and participation with increased number of local crop varieties recovered and re-introduced 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 Georgia, it should need to conduct cooperative research between Korea and Georgia on characterization as well as collection and management of local crop in Georgia.