Genetic resources: collection, characterization, conservation and documentation.

Abstract

This chapter describes the major ex situ and core collections (including landraces, wild relatives, elite germplasm and cultivars), aiming to explore the genetic diversity of the global germplasm collections; in situ conservation; characterization and evaluation of collections for key agronomic traits (such as disease resistance, yield and quality); and utilization of germplasm of lentil.

Grain Legumes

“…The ICARDA, headquartered in Beirut, Lebanon, is well positioned geographically and culturally to be the primary institute for research on lentil improvement and; therefore, maintains the world collection of over 10,000 accessions of Lens. Included in these are almost 9000 accessions of cultivated Lens from 70 different countries representing four major geographic regions, 1373 ICARDA breeding lines, and 583 wild Lens taxa from 24 different countries (Furman et al 2009). Most of these were obtained on collection missions conducted by ICARDA personnel.…”

Legume Crops Phylogeny and Genetic Diversity for Science and Breeding

“…The ICARDA has globally mandated research for lentil improvements; it holds roughly 600 wild accessions and the largest collection of wild Lens accessions from 12 countries (Furman, 2006 (Ferguson et al, 2000;Sarker and Erskine, 2006) representing 24 countries. Ex situ collections give priority to the conservation of lentil landraces in order to maximize domestic diversity, as well as to conserve cultivars and landraces that have valuable combinations of traits and assembled linkage groups of valuable genes (Furman et al, 2009). Documentation of agronomic and descriptor traits in the lentil genepool exists across more than half of the world lentil collection at International Lentil Information System (ILIS).…”

An Assessment of Raffinose Family Oligosaccharides and Sucrose Concentration in Genus Lens

“…The International Centre for Agriculture in Dry Areas (ICARDA) has a global mandate for research on lentil improvement and holds the largest lentil germplasm collection in the world (Furman et al, 2009). This collection of 10,509 accessions is comprised of 8789 accessions of cultivated lentils from more than 70 different countries, 1146 breeding lines, and 574 accessions of wild lentil species representing 23 countries (Furman, 2006).…”

“…Evaluation and screening of such a large germplasm collection for a specific trait is not practical, and therefore a core collection has been drawn from the germplasm collection. The core collection of 1000 genotypes represents the genetic variability and diversity of the entire germplasm collection (Brown, 1989) and was selected through hierarchical cluster analysis using agronomic traits and a two‐step cluster analysis using agroclimatological data (Furman et al, 2009; Furman, 2006). Mini core collections are collections that consist of about 10% of the genotypes found in the core collection or 1% of the entire collection but still represent the diversity of the entire core collection (Upadhyaya and Ortiz, 2001).…”