Abstract
Four categories of plant genetic resources (PGR) are important for breeding: Wild relatives, ecotypes, landraces, and cultivars. Forage and turf species differ from field crops in the relative importance of these categories, as well as in the relative importance of in situ vs. ex situ conservation. As they are less domesticated, a continuum of wild and naturalized forms of the cultivated species exists as ecotypes in a great variety of permanent grasslands. An often random fraction of this variety has been either used to aliment active breeding pools or collected in gene banks, while a great range of potentially useful genetic variation remains yet to be exploited.
This paper reviews recent, partly molecular marker based literature pointing to criteria and strategies of collecting PGR in situ in grassland dominated regions. Guidelines are given for establishing and maintaining ex situ germplasm collections and for evaluating them in view of their utilization by breeders. A comprehensive overview of publicly accessible germplasm collections, especially those in the auspices of European Co-operative Programme for Plant Genetic Resources (ECPGR) is given. Their present status and expected future developments are high-lighted. Strategies for breeders to utilize domestic and exotic germplasm in breeding programmes are presented. Also pre-breeding strategies along with a Nordic case study will be presented in order to demonstrate the utilisation of unique alleles outside the breeding pool. The potential of new molecular tools for the management and better utilization of PGR collections is shown.
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Boller, B., Veteläinen, M. (2010). A State of the Art of Germplasm Collections for Forage and Turf Species. In: Huyghe, C. (eds) Sustainable use of Genetic Diversity in Forage and Turf Breeding. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8706-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8706-5_2
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