Sources of PGRFA
The list below contains links to websites offering information about plant genetic resources conserved ex situ, i.e. outside their natural habitats. This usually refers to genebaks or similar organizations where the material is conserved in refrigerators, in glass containers or in fields maintained in controlled conditions.
- International Plant Names Index It provides nomenclatural data (spelling, author, types and first place/date of publication) for the scientific names of vascular plants from family to infraspecific ranks.
- Genesys It plays a key role in the Global Information System of the ITPGRFA by specifically supporting genebanks in making information about their collections accessible to the world. It connects resources from CGIAR genebanks and several regional and national collections.
- FAO's WIEWS - World Information and Early Warning System on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture It is the information system used by FAO for the preparation of periodic, country-driven global assessments of the status of conservation and use of PGRFA. WIEWS also monitors, on the basis of country reports, the implementation of the Global Plan of Action for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. It provides access to an ex situ search form.
- Svalbard Seed Portal The Svalbard seed portal offers safe, free-of-charge, long-term storage of seed sample duplicates of the crop diversity stored in the world's genebanks. The seeds are stored under black box conditions according to FAO's genebank standards. The Nordic Genetic Resource Centre (NordGen) is the Nordic countries' genebank and knowledge centre for genetic resources. NordGen is responsible for the operations of the Seed Vault in collaboration with the Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture and Food and the international organization Crop Trust. The Seed Portal of Svalbard Global Seed Vault is used for managing the more than one million seed samples currently stored in the Seed Vault. NordGen is responsible for maintaining the Seed Portal which is updated after each new deposit of seed samples.
- Kew Millennium Seed Bank It is one of the largest ex situ plant conservation programme in the world, and it is coordinated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
- EURISCO European Search Catalogue for Plant Genetic Resources of the European Cooperative Programme for Plant Genetic Resources (ECPGR).
- GENBIS Active since 2020, the GENBIS (Baltic - Nordic Baltic Genebanks Information System) database uses the GRIN-Global system to pool together all information regarding plant genetic resources pertaining to NordGen and the national genebanks of Nordic and Baltic countries. The information can be accessed both by internal and external users, for example to order genetic material.
- GRIN Germplasm Resources Information Network documents animal, microbial, and plant collections through informational pages, searchable databases, and links to USDA-ARS projects that curate the collections. Search form for plant collections.
- Web-SDIS Information System of the Southern African Development Community.
'In-situ conservation' means the conservation of ecosystems and natural habitats and the maintenance and recovery of viable populations of species in their natural surroundings and, in the case of domesticated or cultivated species, in the surroundings where they have developed their distinctive properties.
- Global Biodiversity Information Facility GBIF is an international network and data infrastructure funded by the world's governments and aimed at providing anyone, anywhere, open access to data about all types of life on Earth.
- Bioversity database on collecting missions This biodiversity database offers access to original passport data of more than 220,000 samples collected around the world during Bioversity International supported missions. About 150,000 samples are currently geo-referenced and can be displayed on a map.
- Crop Wild Relatives at Bioversity International It was created within the framework of the UNEP-GEF supported project "In situ conservation of crop wild relatives through enhanced information management and field application" (2004-2010). The portal further expanded under the EU-ACP funded project "In situ conservation and use of crop wild relatives in three ACP countries of the SADC region" (2014-2016) and is now being maintained and updated under the Darwin Initiative funded project "Bridging agriculture and environment: Southern Africa crop wild relative regional network" (2019-2022).
- The Crop Wild Relative Project at the Global Crop Diversity Trust From 2011 to 2021, the project brought together institutions, researchers, plant breeders, farmers and industry to collect, conserve and use the wild relatives of priority crops.
- The Harlan and de Wet - Crop Wild Relative inventory It uses both genepool concepts as well as documentation of CWR species that have been successfully used in breeding in the past to provide a priority list of 1400 CWR species, along with key ancillary data such as their regional and national occurrence, seed storage behavior and herbaria housing major collections of CWR.
- German wild celery network Since 2015, researchers from the Julius Kühn Institute, the University of Osnabrück and Humboldt University of Berlin have been investigating the genetic diversity of wild celery occurrences in Germany in the frame of the Project "Genetic Reserves for Wild Celery Species (Apium and Helosciadium) as Part of a Network of Genetic Reserves in Germany (GE-Sell)". The aim of the project was to use various wild celery species as model objects to demonstrate how the protection of wild plants for food and agriculture in their natural habitats can be improved by establishing an exemplary nationwide network of genetic reserves.
- ABS Clearing-House Mechanism of the CBD It is is a platform for exchanging information on access and benefit-sharing and is a key tool to facilitate the implementation of the Nagoya Protocol.
This section refers to the conservation and management of the genetic diversity of crop landraces within traditional farming systems.
The list below offers leads to other websites relevant to plant genetic resources conservation and development.
- Pluto Plant Variety Database The PLUTO database of Svalbard plant varieties offers information about the protected plant varieties. Hence, it also provides information on those that were protected and that at a certain point become available.
- European Information System on Forest Genetic Resources EUFGIS provides geo-referenced information on the conservation of forest genetic resources in Europe and access to detailed data on dynamic gene conservation units of forest trees in different countries. The data is provided and frequently updated by national focal points based on pan-European minimum requirements and data standards for the units. EUFGIS serves as a documentation platform linking national inventories on forest genetic resources in Europe. This supports the countries in their efforts to conserve forest genetic resources as part of sustainable forest management, as agreed in the context of Forest Europe, the pan-European forest policy process.