Towards Strengthening the National Herbarium of Cultivated Plants with Rice Landrace Diversity

Abstract

Landrace diversity in rice was enriched at the National Herbarium of Cultivated Plants (NHCP), ICAR-NBPGR,
New Delhi with addition of over 1,000 herbarium specimens. The samples were selected from material grown for
characterization under an ICAR-DBT project on “Mainstreaming rice landraces diversity in varietal development
through genome-wide association studies: a model for large-scale utilization of gene bank collections of rice”.
The paper discusses the role of NHCP in preserving landraces of rice and follow same model to other crop
landraces. Addition of 17 important landraces with their characters and associated passport information data
would help the users working in diff erent fi elds.