Breeding germplasm collections

Plant genetic resource collections are vital to plant breeding efforts. In the early 1990s, one survey concluded that the Jerusalem artichoke gene pool available to plant breeding may not exceed 150 accessions (van Soest et al., 1993). However, even given duplications in different collections, this appears to be an underestimate. Many hundreds of accessions are today maintained in plant germplasm collections worldwide. These include wild and weedy accessions, landraces or traditional and obsolete cultivars, and advanced or improved cultivars. 

In Slovakia, the crop plant germplasm collection is stored in around 18 specialized research and breeding institutes. The Research Institute of Plant Protection in Piestany, Slovakia, holds six accessions (2002 data) four advanced cultivars and a landrace from Hungary, and an advanced cultivar from the Czech Republic (IPGRI, 2006). 

The breeding of different strains of soybean relies in part on germplasm banks in India, Japan, South Korea and the USA (USDA, Soybean germplasm collection). 

Since many essential oil-bearing species are in the transitional phase from wild plants to systematic cultivation, appropriate breeding progress can be achieved by simple selection. Wild collections or accessions of germplasm collections are the basis, and good results were obtained, for example, with Origanum sp. (Putievsky et al., 1997) in limited time and at low expenses. 

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