Continuing with its effort to include more national Genebanks, Genesys welcomes NAGRC-NARC, Nepal’s national genebank, as a new data provider.
Nepal’s history of scientific plant exploration and collection and evaluation of indigenous plants began in the late 1930s. However, conservation in this land of the majestic Himalayan mountains dates back to ancient Hindu ritual practices (Joshi et al., 2012).
A facility for orthodox seed storage under medium-term conditions was created in 1986 for orthodox seeds. The National Agriculture Genetic Resources Center (NAGRC), with long-, medium- and short-term conservation facilities, was conceived in 2010 under the Nepal Agricultural Research Council. It’s aim is to conserve and utilize genetic resources relevant to national economic growth and food security.
NAGRC’s collections include six components of agrobiodiversity, i.e. crops, aquatic genetic resources, livestock, forages, insects, and microorganisms, as well as wild relatives and wild edible agricultural genetic resources (Joshi et al., 2020).
The ex situ accessions of orthodox seeds for food and agriculture are stored as:
Original collections in long-term storage: Around 2000 seeds for self-pollinated crops and 4000 seeds for cross-pollinated crop species are stored at -18°C for 50-100 years.
Active collections in medium-term storage: Around 4000 seeds for self-pollinated crops and 8000 for cross pollinated crops are stored between 5°-10°C for 5-15 years.
Stay tuned for NAGRC’s passport data!
References:
Joshi, B.K., Ghimire, K., Bhatta, M., 2012. An Introduction to National Agriculture Genetic Resources Center (Genebank) [WWW Document]. ResearchGate. URL https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333967792_An_Introduction_to_National_Agriculture_Genetic_Resources_Center_Genebank
Joshi, B.K., Gorkhali, N.A., Pradhan, N., Ghimire, K.H., Gotame, T.P., Kc, P., Mainali, R.P., Karkee, A., Paneru, R.B., 2020. Agrobiodiversity and its Conservation in Nepal. Journal of Nepal Agricultural Research Council 6, 14–33. https://doi.org/10.3126/jnarc.v6i0.28111