Germplasm Holdings of Agri-Horticultural Crops in Gene Bank
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Abstract
The National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources at New Delhi has the national
mandate to collect, evaluate, document and conserve genetic diversity in crop
plants and their wild relatives. Seed storage facilities have been developed and
the National Gene Bank (repository) holds over 1,00,000 collections.
India is an important centre of diversity for many crops. Concerted efforts
have been made to collect this diversity in various agri-horticultural crop plants,
which, with the spread of HYVs, is getting erooed. Thus, large indigenous collections
have been built up and these include primitive cultivars/landraces, wild/weedy
types, obsolete cultivars, currently grown varieties, etc. The best way by which
the plant genetic resources could be conserved safely and cheaply is through seed