Crop regeneration

useful only for gene-banks

Crop regeneration background and definition as retrieved from Crop genebank knowledge base website by CGIAR

Background

Genebanks must ensure that their germplasm accessions are kept viable and at high quality for as long as possible. Even under the highest standards of management, however, germplasm deteriorates with time and needs to be regenerated. For many genebanks, maintaining collections at acceptable levels of viability and quality is difficult due to the costs involved and their limited capacity and technical expertise — especially when faced with the complex regeneration procedures required by some species (FAO 1998). This has resulted in regeneration backlogs, which is putting important unique material in danger, as highlighted by both FAO’s State of the World Report and the crop conservation strategies developed over the past few years with support from the Global Crop Diversity Trust (the Trust), in many cases facilitated by CGIAR centres. The Trust is therefore supporting the regeneration of such priority threatened material around the world. While a generic decision-support tool for regeneration exists (Sackville Hamilton and Chorlton 1997), some crop-specific knowledge and expertise is required. Unfortunately, although such knowledge exists in genebanks around the world, including the CGIAR Centres, no attempt has been made - until now - to identify, collate and publish best practices to help collection holders undertake regeneration in ways that maintain the genetic integrity and optimize the viability of the planting material they produce. The Trust has therefore requested Bioversity, acting on behalf of the System-wide Genetic Resources Programme (SGRP), to develop crop-specific regeneration guidelines for the 21 major food crops banana, bean, breadfruit, cassava, chickpea, coconut, cowpea, fababean, fingermillet, grasspea, maize, major aroids, lentil, pearl millet, pigeon pea, potato, rice, sorghum, sweet potato, wheat and yam) that are being targeted in the Trust’s regeneration initiative.

Definition

In these guidelines, the term regeneration is taken to mean the re-establishment of samples genetically similar to the original collection when viability or plant numbers are low. Regeneration is also necessary for new accessions which need long-term conservation if quantities are too low, and may be required for sanitary reasons to eliminate diseases. In the case of clonal crops conserved in field genebanks, re-establishment could either be on the same site or in a different site for security or to avoid diseases and pests.