Articles
The Global Plant Cryopreservation Initiative: building capacity and ensuring long-term conservation of clonal and recalcitrant seed collections
Article number
1421_6
Pages
43 – 46
Language
English
Abstract
The Global Crop Diversity Trust and CGIAR are initiating a sustainable system to conserve at-risk genetic resources collections of clonal and recalcitrant seed crops in low- and middle-income countries to ensure the safeguarding of this unique crop diversity for future generations.
The proposed Global Plant Cryopreservation Initiative builds on two pillars: 1) specialized hubs with expertise in the cryopreservation of diverse genetic resources collections of clonal and recalcitrant seed crops to serve as Global Centers of Plant Cryopreservation excellence and back-up cryopreservation facilities.
These hubs will be situated in three CGIAR Centers with critical cryopreservation expertise and infrastructure with the aim to expand to other locations.
They will work closely with national agricultural research centers (NARS) in their region to carry out the goal of the Initiative, the long-term stable conservation of vulnerable diverse crop collections on a large scale; 2) the formation of a global community of practice (CoP) for long-term conservation of clonal and recalcitrant seed crop collections with a focus on cryopreservation, and to foster collaboration among genebanks worldwide which seek to safety duplicate and secure unique crop diversity for the long-term.
This initiative will bring together expertise on clonal and recalcitrant seed genetic resources conservation to focus their attention on the needs of low- and middle-income countries, and ultimately provide the long-term secure safeguarding of genetic diversity in cryobanks.
The initiative will foster knowledge-sharing, strengthen approaches and standards for plant cryopreservation, and help build capacity for collecting and safeguarding invaluable crop genetic resources from national and international collections.
The proposed Global Plant Cryopreservation Initiative builds on two pillars: 1) specialized hubs with expertise in the cryopreservation of diverse genetic resources collections of clonal and recalcitrant seed crops to serve as Global Centers of Plant Cryopreservation excellence and back-up cryopreservation facilities.
These hubs will be situated in three CGIAR Centers with critical cryopreservation expertise and infrastructure with the aim to expand to other locations.
They will work closely with national agricultural research centers (NARS) in their region to carry out the goal of the Initiative, the long-term stable conservation of vulnerable diverse crop collections on a large scale; 2) the formation of a global community of practice (CoP) for long-term conservation of clonal and recalcitrant seed crop collections with a focus on cryopreservation, and to foster collaboration among genebanks worldwide which seek to safety duplicate and secure unique crop diversity for the long-term.
This initiative will bring together expertise on clonal and recalcitrant seed genetic resources conservation to focus their attention on the needs of low- and middle-income countries, and ultimately provide the long-term secure safeguarding of genetic diversity in cryobanks.
The initiative will foster knowledge-sharing, strengthen approaches and standards for plant cryopreservation, and help build capacity for collecting and safeguarding invaluable crop genetic resources from national and international collections.
Authors
S. Krishnan, C. Lusty, M. Engbers, B. Cate, D. Ellis
Keywords
Global Plant Cryopreservation Initiative, clonal crops, recalcitrant seed crops, long-term conservation
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