Strengthening the impact of plant genetic resources through collaborative collection, conservation, characterisation, and evaluation: a tribute to the legacy of Dr Clive Francis

This paper is a tribute to the legacy of Dr Clive Francis, who directly and indirectly collected >14 000 accessions across 60 genera of pasture, forage, and crop species and their wild relatives around the Mediterranean basin, Eastern Africa, and Central and South Asia from 1973 to 2005. This was achieved by a collaborative approach that built strong interactions between disparate organisations (ICARDA, VIR, CLIMA, and Australian genebanks) based on germplasm exchange, conservation and documentation, capacity building, and joint collection. These activities greatly strengthened Australian pasture, forage, and crop genebanks, and led to widespread germplasm utilisation that has waned in the last 5 years, reflecting changing priorities among industry funding bodies and research providers. This situation must be reversed, given the pivotal role genetic resource collections must play to broaden the genetic and adaptive base of plant breeding, to meet the challenge of feeding an increasing population in a depleting resource base. Because the use of germplasm subsets that facilitate phenotyping will stimulate wider utilisation of genetic resources, we discuss the application of core collection and germplasm selection through habitat characterisation/filtering in Australian collections. Both are valid entry points into large collections, but the latter has the advantage of enabling both trait discovery and investigation of plant adaptation, and because it is based on a priori hypothesis testing, it increases understanding even when the trait of interest is not identified

Food legume production in China

AbstractFood legumes comprise all legumes grown for human food in China as either dry grains or vegetables, except for soybean and groundnut. China has a vast territory with complex ecological conditions. Rotation, intercropping, and mixed cropping involving pulses are normal cropping systems in China. Whether indigenous or introduced crops, pulses have played an important role in Chinese cropping systems and made an important contribution to food resources for humans since ancient times. The six major food legume species (pea, faba bean, common bean, mung bean, adzuki bean, and cowpea) are the most well-known pulses in China, as well as those with more local distributions; runner bean, lima bean, chickpea, lentil, grass pea, lupine, rice bean, black gram, hyacinth bean, pigeon pea, velvet bean, winged bean, guar bean, sword bean, and jack bean. China has remained the world's leading producer of peas, faba beans, mung beans, and adzuki beans in recent decades, as documented by FAO statistics and China Agriculture Statistical Reports. The demand for food legumes as a healthy food will markedly increase with the improvement of living standards in China. Since China officially joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, imports of pea from Canada and Australia have rapidly increased, resulting in reduced prices for dry pea and other food legumes. With reduced profits for food legume crops, their sowing area and total production has decreased within China. At the same time, the rising consumer demand for vegetable food legumes as a healthy food has led to attractive market prices and sharp production increases in China. Vegetable food legumes have reduced growing duration and enable flexibility in cropping systems. In the future, production of dry food legumes will range from stable to slowly decreasing, while production of vegetable food legumes will continue to increase

Diversity maintenance and use of Vicia faba L. genetic resources

The faba bean (Vicia faba L.) is an ancient crop that is represented in collections by cultivated forms only. Botanic and molecular data suggest that the wild ancestor of this species has not yet been discovered or has become extinct. This fact makes ex situ collections more crucial for the present and future breeding activities of this crop, especially when the modernization of agriculture reduces genetic diversity. At the world level, more than 38,000 accession entries are included in at least 37 listed collections. The partial allogamous status of this crop makes maintenance activity of genotypes more expensive and difficult. In addition to the requirement of fixed genotypes to support new association genetics strategies, there is a need for more research on pollinators and maintenance of genetic diversity within populations. A large genetic variability has already been identified in V. faba in terms of floral biology, seed size and composition, and also tolerance to several biotic and abiotic stresses. More knowledge is needed on the interactions of V. faba with parasitic and pollinator insects, on traits related to environmental adaptation and impacts, on nitrogen fixation in interaction with soil Rhizobia and on bioenergy potential, which strengthens the demand for new and large phenotyping actions. Diversity analysis through genotyping is just beginning. The use of amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) or simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers has allowed genetic resources to be distinguished according to their geographic origin and the structuring of collections. Conservation of gene sequences among legume species and the rapid discovery of genes (particularly in the model species Medicago truncatula and Lotus japonicus), together with robotic developments in molecular biology, offer new possibilities for the analysis of sequence diversity for V. faba genes and to evaluate their impact on phenotypic traits. Combined genotyping and phenotyping projects must continue on V. faba so that core collections can be defined; these will help in the discovery of genes and alleles of interest for breeders. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The contribution of M.J. Suso was partially supported by the RF2006-00002-00-00 project.Peer Reviewe

A multiplex PCR for rapid identification of Brassica species in the triangle of U

Abstract Background Within the Brassicaceae, six species from the genus Brassica are widely cultivated throughout the world as oilseed, condiment, fodder or vegetable crops. The genetic relationships among the six Brassica species are described by U’s triangle model. Extensive shared traits and diverse morphotypes among Brassica species make identification and classification based on phenotypic data alone challenging and unreliable, especially when dealing with large germplasm collections. Consequently, a major issue for genebank collections is ensuring the correct identification of species. Molecular genotyping based on simple sequence repeat (SSR) marker sequencing or the Illumina Infinium Brassica napus 60K single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array has been used to identify species and assess genetic diversity of Brassica collections. However, these methods are technically challenging, expensive and time-consuming, making them unsuitable for routine or rapid screening of Brassica accessions for germplasm management. A cheaper, faster and simpler method for Brassica species identification is described here. Results A multiplex polymerase chain reaction (MPCR) consisting of new and existing primers specific to the Brassica A, B and C genomes was able to reliably distinguish all six Brassica species in the triangle of U with 16 control samples of known species identity. Further validation against 120 Brassica accessions previously genotyped showed that the MPCR is highly accurate and comparable to more advanced techniques such as SSR marker sequencing or the Illumina Infinium B. napus 60K SNP array. In addition, the MPCR was sensitive enough to detect seed contaminations in pooled seed samples of Brassica accessions. Conclusion A cheap and fast multiplex PCR assay for identification of Brassica species in the triangle of U was developed and validated in this study. The MPCR assay can be readily implemented in any basic molecular laboratory and should prove useful for the management of Brassica germplasm collections in genebanks

MOESM1 of A multiplex PCR for rapid identification of Brassica species in the triangle of U

Additional file 1: Table S1. Genebank passport information and genotyping results for 120 Brassica accessions