Crop plants are the basis of our food supply. The demand for the highest possible productivity, as the human population increased in number, has in effect narrowed the gene base of our crop plants to only the most productive cultivars. Never before in human history have the rates of extinction for the ancestral forms of our basic agricultural plants been as high as they are now. Both the USDA through the National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS) at the national level and the International Board of Plant Genetic Resources (IBPGR) at the international level have active programs to collect, store, and evaluate this germplasm for present and future use. The scope and status of these programs are reviewed in detail. Clearly the future of plant breeding, and, therefore agriculture and the world food supply, rest on the genetic potential of plant genetic resources now being stored in gene banks. The location and holdings of these gene banks are reviewed. For the future, both the nations which possess this genetic d...

Current status of crop plant germplasm

For many centuries, safflower, Carthamus tinctorius L., was grown for the dye extracted from its flowers and as a minor oilseed crop. Only in recent decades has it become an oilseed crop of importance in some areas. In the traditional mode of cultivation, in small plots, there were many small populations in which various selection pressures could operate. The world germ plasm collection of safflower with nearly 2000 lines originating in about 30 countries, was evaluated for divergence by studying the distributions of various expressions (states) of 13 morphological characters (descriptors). The traits were: late rosette leaves' margin; upper stem leaves' margin, shape and color; branches' location and angle; primary head shape; outer involucral bracts' cross section, attitude, spines' length, number and location; corolla color. Divergence due to human and/or natural selection was found for some of the traits and ten centers of cultivation were designated. Geographical sources for desirable traits were identified.

Evaluation of the germ plasm collection of safflower, Carthamus tinctorius L. V. Distribution and regional divergence for morphological characters

In the 1970s, concerns about the erosion of genetic diversity of crops led to the establishment of genebanks, repositories for the conservation of plant genetic material, which raise interesting questions about the ways in which biobanking constructs and shapes bioeconomies. Past theorizations have shown that biobanks are part of new bioeconomies that complicate distinctions between social and economic values, and play essential role by managing the different values and priorities In this thesis, I extend this approach to the conservation and use of crop germplasm. Plant genetic resources for food and agriculture circulate internationally in what I term the ‘germplasm economy’: a complex arrangement that is notable for including a novel multilateral system of mutual facilitated access and benefit sharing. Thus, here I analyse the practices and organisation of genebanks, as a means to explore their role in that economy. Based on an interpretive, discourse analysis of documents and 22 semi-structured, qualitative interviews (with actors involved in gene banking policy and practice in Europe), I argue that genebanks construct the shared pool of plant germplasm by constructing ‘genetic resources’ from germplasm, therefore creating a gene pool that is technically and politically available for sharing in accordance with national and international germplasm policy. In so doing, they manage the different value(s) associated with germplasm in ways that enable and justify the international germplasm economy. Hence, this work corroborates the perspective that biobanks of biological material manage and create the economies that they are part of. Yet, in addition, it suggests that genebanks themselves can be considered resources, and that this understanding is important in constructing the germplasm economy as one predicated on sharing Therefore, it suggests that analyses of biomaterial economies should take into consideration both studies of the bioeconomy and of the political economy of technoscience.

Saving the gene pool : genebanks and the political economy of crop germplasm conservation

Plants are major factors conditioning an environment, and conservation of particular environments depends fundamentally on the maintenance of existing plant communities. In many parts of the world, the destruction of such communities is occurring so rapidly and so completely that entire natural systems are subject to, or threatened with, total destruction. In such cases artificial methods of conserving plant germplasm for ultimate regeneration, for supplementing natural populations, for study, or for use by Man as an economic resource, may be of great significance as one possible means of averting total loss. Under less extreme pressures, the availability of representative propagules of significant taxa or populations may be of crucial assistance as an aid to research directed towards a better understanding of factors affecting survival or competitive advantage in the wild, or as a means of providing stocks for assessment of the potential economic value of existing reserves of wild species. This paper discusses methods of recording, maintaining, and evaluating, collections of populations of wild species. Plant resources of this kind are extremely vulnerable when maintained under artificial conditions, and a very high proportion of collections are lost within a few years, remain unavailable for general use, or fail to be used owing to inadequate documentation. Conservation of plant germ-plasm as an international resource, in a usable form, depends on a wide acceptance and practice of greatly improved methods of documentation, and requires the creation of effective organizations for surveying, maintaining, and coordinating, plant resources on an international scale.

The Collection, Maintenance, and Environmental Importance, of the Genetic Resources of Wild Plants

Computer werden in Genbanken zur Verwaltung, Auswertung und Bereitstellung der umfangreichen Informationsmengen eingesetzt, um das Genbankmanagement zu unterstutzen und die Verfugbarkeit der pflanzlichen genetischen Ressourcen fur die Nutzer, insbesondere die Zuchter, zu verbessern. In dieser Arbeit wird ein Uberblick uber verschiedene Aspekte der computergestutzten Genbankdokumentation gegeben.

Computer in Genbanken — eine Übersicht

stocks includes information relative to the identification, the genealogy or origin, and the genetic composition and nature of the specific maintenance unit. Complete and proper documentation is important not only to the effectiveness of programs concerned with the conservation and management of these genetic resources; it is both functional and useful in plant improvement research. Increasingly greater usefulness is added, and the genetic resources increase in value as the documentation can be supplemented by descriptive information, performance, and evaluation data and records of identified genes. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the need for better documentation of our plant genetic stocks, to suggest some approaches to the internationally standardized documentation, and to suggest ways in which improved and standardized documentation might aid in the conservation, management,

S. M. Dietz

Papers

Documentation for the conservation, management, and use of plant genetic resources