Articles
French national coordination for conservation of plant genetic resources and their wild relatives: focus on horticultural species
Article number
1384_26
Pages
199 – 206
Language
English
Abstract
Plant genetic resources and traditional knowledge are an inestimable heritage; their conservation is of immediate importance to mankind facing climate change, population growth, disappearance of know-how and plant genetic erosion, etc.
To meet these challenges France has structured the conservation of plant genetic resources by bringing together under the umbrella of National Coordination two distinct entities: the National Coordination Structure and a CTPS Section on plant genetic resource conservation (i.e., a technical advisory board for the Ministry of Agriculture and Food). These two entities have parallel missions toward the conservation of cultivated PGRs and their CWR throughout France except for forest trees.
One of these missions is to identify and to support both stakeholders involved in PGR conservation and in situ, ex situ and on farm PGR collections, in particular those meeting the criteria defined by the French government.
Since 2019, seven curators have obtained this official recognition.
Another mission is to identify the resources which have an importance for France especially resources of heritage value and for which there are a long-term conservation issue to include them into the National Collection and to make them available through the European database EURISCO. Activities of the national coordination are also carried out on identifying and safeguarding threatened collections and orphan species.
An important progress on this aspect consisted in the creation since 2020 of three new public-private cooperation networks on bean, onion, and lettuce genetic resources.
To meet these challenges France has structured the conservation of plant genetic resources by bringing together under the umbrella of National Coordination two distinct entities: the National Coordination Structure and a CTPS Section on plant genetic resource conservation (i.e., a technical advisory board for the Ministry of Agriculture and Food). These two entities have parallel missions toward the conservation of cultivated PGRs and their CWR throughout France except for forest trees.
One of these missions is to identify and to support both stakeholders involved in PGR conservation and in situ, ex situ and on farm PGR collections, in particular those meeting the criteria defined by the French government.
Since 2019, seven curators have obtained this official recognition.
Another mission is to identify the resources which have an importance for France especially resources of heritage value and for which there are a long-term conservation issue to include them into the National Collection and to make them available through the European database EURISCO. Activities of the national coordination are also carried out on identifying and safeguarding threatened collections and orphan species.
An important progress on this aspect consisted in the creation since 2020 of three new public-private cooperation networks on bean, onion, and lettuce genetic resources.
Authors
C.H. Duval, A. Didier, M. Delêtre, M. Omrani, B. van Issum-Groyer, V. Bertoux, F. Masson
Keywords
plant genetic resources, official recognition, national collection
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