Astley, D.

Cadot, V.

Coquin, P.

Kik, C.

Lohwasser, U.

Pink, D.A.

Treuren, R., van

English

Wageningen Yield 

12
Bioversity Newsletter for Europe - issue No. 42
Chris Kik, Rob van Treuren (CGN, the 
Netherlands), 
Dave Pink, Dave Astley (Warwick HRI, 
United Kingdom), 
Pascal Coquin, Valerie Cadot (GEVES, 
France), 
Andreas Boerner, Ulrike Lohwasser, 
Stefanie Thumm (IPK, Germany), 
Ales Lebeda, Eva Kristkova (Palacky 
University, Czech Republic), 
Svein Solberg, Kristina Antonius (NordGen, 
Sweden), 
Brigitte Maisonneuve (INRA, France), 
Franziska Lerch (Arche Noah, Austria), 
Phil Sumption (Garden Organic, United 
Kingdom), 
Filippo D’Antuono (University of Bologna, 
Italy), 
Vladimir Meglic (KIS, Slovenia),
Bela Bartha (ProSpecieRara, Switzerland)
A consortium of twelve partners from ten 
European countries recently finished a four 
year project, ‘Leafy Vegetables, stimulating 
use’, coordinated by The Centre for 
Genetic Resources (CGN), Netherlands, in 
the framework of the European GENRES 
programme. 
The project focused on the improvement 
of the ex situ management of the European 
genetic resources of leafy vegetables such 
as lettuce, spinach, chicory, lamb’s lettuce 
and rocket. At the start of the project no 
adequate crop databases were available 
for spinach, chicory and minor leafy 
vegetables and the international lettuce 
database needed updating. Consequently, 
the European genebank community did 
not have a good overview of their stored 
leafy vegetable germplasm and gaps in 
collections could not be identified, resulting 
in the absence of a clear collecting 
strategy for leafy vegetables. Furthermore, 
there was limited access to trait data in 
databases which made it difficult for the 
user to select appropriate accessions. 
Safety duplication was also lacking for part 
of the European collections. Last but not 
least, the visibility of leafy vegetables to the 
general public was low, limiting their use.
To address these issues, the consortium 
developed a unique leafy vegetable crop 
portal on the web (http://documents.
plant.wur.nl/cgn/pgr/LVintro/) in which 
most, if not all, leafy vegetables present 
in genebanks worldwide were included 
will almost certainly lead to a better 
management on the European level of 
leafy vegetables collections and will 
contribute to more sustainable use of 
these collections. More information on the 
project can be found at http://documents.
plant.wur.nl/cgn/pgr/leafyveg, or contact :
Chris	Kik,	Head	Curator	Crops,
Centre for Genetic Resources, the 
Netherlands (CGN), Wageningen University 
and Research Centre
chris.kik@wur.nl
Action 001 AGRI GEN RES 870/2004 
(Leafy Vegetables germplasm, stimulating 
use) received financial support from the 
European Commission, Directorate-General 
for Agriculture and Rural Development, 
under Council Regulation (EC) No 
870/2004.
and all the information could be retrieved 
using the same format. The limited access 
to trait information in leafy vegetable 
crop databases was addressed by the 
implementation of a download utility in 
the crop portal. This facility allows the 
easy downloading of passport data, C&E 
data and utilization data. The portal also 
allows detailed gap analyses and on the 
basis of such analyses, recommendations 
were formulated on which leafy vegetable 
species to collect and where. The lack 
of safety duplication of several leafy 
vegetables collections of the partners is 
a threat to the long term sustainability of 
these collections. Actions were therefore 
taken to increase the level of safety 
duplication and all base collections of the 
partners are currently safety duplicated. 
Regeneration, characterization and 
evaluation are crucial aspects of proper 
genebank management and most of 
the time on this project was devoted to 
these activities. In total 1386 accessions 
were regenerated, 1950 characterized 
and 770 were evaluated. These numbers 
significantly exceeded the targets set at 
the start of the project. Via a number of 
workshops with NGOs, which were open 
to the general public, the wealth of tastes, 
colours and forms of leafy vegetables were 
shown in order to stimulate their use.
In summary, the actions carried out 
in the GENRES leafy vegetables project 
Leafy vegetables GENRES project successfully completed!
Partners and observers at the final meeting of the GENRES Leafy Veg in Montfavet, France in November 
2010. Photo: C. Kik, Centre for Genetic Resources, The Netherlands


Leafy vegetables GENRES project successfully completed

Leafy vegetables GENRES project successfully completed

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