Cryopreservation and In Vitro banking: a cool subject – Preface from the editors

Plant breeding depends largely on having access to a wide variety of plant genetic resources, which are vulnerable to losses caused by biotic and abiotic threats when grown in the field or in a greenhouse. Thus, cryopreservation or in vitro banking is a safe strategy for long-term conservation of such genetic resources, which serves as back-up collections for field genebanks and reduces. However, more research is still needed. Cryopreservation projects must have clear goals, long-term funding, skilled technical support staff, necessary infrastructure, and well-defined procedures and protocols, so that they can be routinely implemented in plant cryobanks and help to establish backup collections of valuable plant genetic resources.