Abstract
The characterisation and preliminary evaluation of annual pasture legume germplasm provides seed and data essential for the effective conservation of the resource, the basis for further research and the development of new and improved pasture cultivars.
This paper deals with the characterisation and preliminary evaluation of annual pasture legumes at the Australian Medicago Genetic Resource Centre, Adelaide, South Australia; the French Forage Genetic Resource Centre, Montpellier, France and; the Australian Trifolium Genetic Resource Centre, South Perth, Western Australia. These Centres play a major international role in the preservation of pasture legumes with a total of 50,000 accessions conserved between them. Of these some 35,000 accessions, or 70% are characterised.
Preliminary evaluation and characterisation of pasture accessions is a major focus of these Centres, all of which are closely associated with national pasture improvement programs. Characterisation of germplasm involves, the multiplication of seed, the collection of data important for efficient utilisation of the resource and taxonomic identification of each accession.
The three Centres were established in the past 30 years and were set up with the aim of assembling germplasm of predetermined taxa, as this is the basis for the development of improved cultivars. Characterisation methodologies vary at each Centre, with the Australian Centres growing accessions in the field as spaced plants and the French program growing plants in a glasshouse soil tank. The characteristics recorded also vary between programs.
Issues of concern for the Centres are discussed and include; funding for long term conservation; evaluation of backlogs of germplasm; ownership of germplasm and conditions of access; encouraging effective use of the collections; the lack of diversity of many new alternative pasture legume species and the handling of data associated with the collections.
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© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Auricht, G.C., Prosperi, J.M., Snowball, R., Hughes, S.J. (1999). The characterisation and preliminary evaluation of Medicago and Trifolium germplasm. In: Bennett, S.J., Cocks, P.S. (eds) Genetic Resources of Mediterranean Pasture and Forage Legumes. Current Plant Science and Biotechnology in Agriculture, vol 33. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4776-7_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4776-7_13
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