Agro Technology & Horticulture

Germplasm Conservation

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Germplasm collections are a wonderful treasure trove of genetic diversity and the foundation for all crop improvement programs. A collection for a single crop species may contain more than 50,000 distinct genetic plant types, yet the genomic profiles are not readily available, limiting application of information contained in the collections. However, new inexpensive technologies offer a low-cost remedy for developing detailed genetic profiles to entire collections. As a result, new genomics information will enhance our ability to correlate a plant’s genotype with its agricultural performance for plant breeding purposes in a way never before possible. Germplasm is the living genetic resources such as seeds or tissue that is maintained for the purpose of animal and plant breeding, preservation, and other research uses. These resources may take the form of seed collections stored in seed banks, trees growing in nurseries, animal breeding lines maintained in animal breeding programs or gene banks, etc.Germplasm is the living genetic resources such as seeds or tissue that is maintained for the purpose of animal and plant breeding, preservation, and other research uses. These resources may take the form of seed collections stored in seed banks, trees growing in nurseries, animal breeding lines maintained in animal breeding programs or gene banks, etc.Germplasm provides the raw material for the breeder to develop various crops. Thus, conservation of assumes significance in all breeding programmes.The very objective of conservation (or storage) is to preserve the genetic diversity of a particular plant or genetic stock for its use at any time in future. In recent years, many new plant species with desired and improved characteristics have started replacing the primitive and conventionally used agricultural plants. It is important to conserve the endangered plants or else some of the valuable genetic traits present in the primitive plants may be lost.Usually, seeds are the most common and convenient materials to conserve plant . This is because many plants are propagated through seeds, and seeds occupy relatively small space. Further, seeds can be easily transported to various places.