Abstract
DEFRA's programme (GC01) on the Ex-situ conservation of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture aims to contribute to the achievement of the UK's international commitments to develop national strategies for the ex-situ conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. In detail, they are to conserve efficiently and effectively genetic resources of agricultural and horticultural crops, where commercial activity is inadequate to safeguard diversity for future needs; to meet the UK's international obligations, to facilitate accessibility to plant genetic resources for agriculture by the characterisation and documentation of information in user-friendly databases; and to identify research needs based on material in UK collections. Applying these policies specifically to curation of the UK National Fruit Collections results in the following objectives; (a)Genetic diversity within the National Fruit Collections will be conserved to a standard commensurate with the needs of the main users, i.e. scientists, breeders and nurserymen. (b)A programme of characterisation, data capture from the archives and data analysis will be undertaken in order to improve documentation of and to assess diversity present within the National Apple Collection both for the purposes of managing the collection and to aid collection users. Preliminary work on using molecular markers to assess genetic diversity and improve management of the collection will be initiated in this project. (c)The National Fruit Collections will continue to play an active role in national and international crop networks, such as the UK Plant Genetic Resources Group and the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute European Cooperative Programme
United Kingdom