By christelle.rabil@croptrust.org
18 November 2021

Margot Forde Germplasm Centre shares data on over 3000 accessions.

The Margot Forde Germplasm Centre (MFGC), the national forage genebank of New Zealand, has added data on over 3600 accessions to Genesys.

These data represent two major temperate forage species, Lolium perenne and Trifolium repens, as well as Trifolium occidentale, a proposed ancestor of Trifolium repens (Williams et al., 2012). Accessions of these species have been collected by staff from the MFGC and its mother institute, AgResearch Ltd and its predecessor organisations, during the past 80 years.

The MFGC was named after the well-known collector and curator Margot Forde in 1992. It currently houses more than 160,000 accessions (a large portion being breeders’ lines) of 2,500 temperate forage species . 

A big challenge for the genebank has been sourcing and updating passport information to make it Genesys-ready. This has involved sifting through old ledgers, collection data forms, and even original field notes. 

Data on some Lolium perenne accessions from 1968.

A further 15,000 accessions from MFGC collection missions, representing over 800 mostly temperate forage species, will be uploaded in the near future. Over 9,000 cultivars and more than 18,000 accessions received from other genebanks will be added to Genesys at a later date.

Staff at MFCG have told Genesys that researchers at AgResearch Ltd and colleagues across New Zealand have enjoyed looking at the distribution of collecting sites on the maps generated by Genesys and experimenting with the climate functions.

References:

Williams, W.M., Ellison, N.W., Ansari, H.A., Verry, I.M., Hussain, S., 2012. Experimental evidence for the ancestry of allotetraploid Trifolium repens and creation of synthetic forms with value for plant breeding. BMC Plant Biology 12, 55. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2229-12-55