Conservation and Management of Genetic Resources of Sorghum, Pearl millet, Chickpea, Pigeonpea, Groundnut and other Small millets in the ICRISAT Genebank

Abstract

ICRISAT operates as a system of genebanks with a main genebank located in Patancheru, (India) and other 3 genebanks located in Niamey (Niger), Nairobi (Kenya) and Bulawayo (Zimbabwe). Each of these genebanks perform all the regular operations and conserve and distribute accessions to users according to their location. In its active collection the ICRISAT genebank at Patancheru holds more than 119,000 accessions of sorghum, groundnut, chickpea, pigeonpea, pearl millet and six other small millets (finger millet, foxtail millet, barnyard millet, kodo millet, little millet and proso millet). In total the genebank conserves accession of 11 different crops that represent 70 – 80% of the available diversity (Upadhyaya et al. 2008). Additionally, accessions of groundnut and pearl millet are also stored at Niamey, accession of sorghum and pearl millet at Bulawayo, and accessions of sorghum, pigeon pea and chickpea at the Nairobi genebank (Koo et al. 2004). In this evaluation we have evaluated only the Patancheru genebank and the main genetic materials conserved in its facilities. 11 The only previous cost evaluation of the ICRISAT genebank corresponds to the work of Koo et al. (2004) that also concentrated on the accessions kept at Patancher