Germplasm collection, storage, and conservation
Book Section
Development
Global
Two basic conservation strategies, in situ and ex situ, each composed of various techniques, are employed for conservation of plant biodiversity. Until recently, most conservation efforts, apart from work on forest genetic resources, have concentrated on ex situ conservation, particularly seed genebanks. In the 1950s and 1960s, major advances in plant breeding brought about the Green Revolution, which resulted in the wide-scale adoption of high-yielding varieties and genetically uniform cultivars of staple crops, particularly wheat and rice. Consequently, global concern about the loss of genetic diversity in these crops increased, as farmers abandoned their locally adapted landraces and traditional varieties and replaced them with improved, yet genetically uniform, modern ones. In response to this concern, research groups started to assemble germplasm collections of the major crop species within their respective mandates. It is in this context that the IBPBR (Bioversity International) was established in 1974 to coordinate the global effort to systematically collect and conserve the world's threatened plant genetic diversity.
