ISHS Acta Horticulturae 623: XXVI International Horticultural Congress: Plant Genetic Resources, The Fabric of Horticulture's Future
MARKER-ASSISTED REDUCTION OF REDUNDANCY IN GERMPLASM COLLECTIONS: GENETIC AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS |
| Authors: | R. van Treuren, T.J.L. van Hintum |
| Keywords: | collection management, genebank economics, genetic diversity, plant genetic resources, molecular markers, optimization, rationalization |
| Abstract:
Germplasm collections invariably contain duplicate accessions, both within and between genebanks. These redundancies are a burden for curators because they do not contribute to the diversity in the collection, but do require genebank budget for maintenance. Thus, both from a genetic and economic point of view, identification and elimination of redundancies should be an important genebank objective. Molecular analysis can complement traditional approaches towards identifying duplications. Interpretation of molecular data is, however, by no means straightforward because various genetic relationships among potential duplicates may occur. Since in all collections, even for self-fertilizing crops intra-accession variation is often observed, the question is not so much whether two accessions are identical, but rather whether they are sufficiently different to consider them distinct. To address this question, statistical methods can be applied to estimate and test molecular variance components. Genetic issues related to the answering of this question are illustrated by experimental data from redundancy studies carried out in various crop collections of the Centre for Genetic Resources, The Netherlands. In addition, economic aspects of rationalization studies are discussed. It is concluded that, considering the high costs of molecular analyses, the potential economic benefits of rationalization with the help of molecular technology should not be taken for granted and indeed strongly depend on the crop involved. In contrast, the added value obtained by molecular characterization in improving insight in the genetic composition of collections and the quality of genebank operations can be regarded considerable. Examples of spin-off from such studies are presented | |
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