Genebank details
The Genetic Resources Centre of IITA in Ibadan, Nigeria, maintains crops important for sub-Saharan Africa: banana, cassava and yam in the field and in vitro; African yam bean, Bambara groundnut, cowpea, maize, sorghum and soybean, and some other legumes, as seed. Details ofabout 31,000 accessions are available through Genesys.
Cowpea accounts for 16,000 accessions, with about 2000 each of Bambara groundnut and soybean and 1500 of maize. The collection of clonal crops includes almost 4000 accessions of cassava, just over 4000 of yam and 283 of banana. More than half of all the accessions are traditional cultivars or landraces and 1.5% are known to be wild relatives.
Seed crops are kept in conventional genebank storage with medium-term and long-term facilities. Clonal crops are kept in field genebanks and in vitro tissue cultures for short and medium term storage, with an increasing number being brought into cryopreservation for long-term storage.
About 60% of the accessions are safety duplicated at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Smaller safety duplicates are held at the Saskatoon Research Centre in Canada and at CIMMYT in Mexico.
