Ecogeographical Land Characterization (ELC) maps as a tool for optimized collecting and improvement on representativeness of a Trichloris genebank in Argentina

MARINONI, LORENA; BORTOLUZZI, ANDRÉS; PARRA-QUIJANO, MAURICIO; ZABALA, JUAN MARCELO; PENSIERO, JOSÉ FRANCISCO

Cambridge

Conferencia; International Conference on ENHANCED GENEPOOL UTILIZATION - Capturing wild relative and landrace diversity for crop improvement.; 2014

Bioversity International, University of Birmingham, Eucarpia, NIAB Innovation Farm

Studies on native wild plant genetic resources become important since they may be domesticated or useful for the identification of genes associated with tolerance to biotic and/or abiotic stress. In order to make available these interesting traits, germplasm collections must to capture species? genetic diversity as much as possible. Optimized collecting method is useful to improve the representativeness on germplasm collections through the inclusion of accessions from all type of environments where the target species occurs. Ecogeographical land characterization (ELC) maps make it possible to detect environmental gaps in germplasm collections and locate potential collecting sites where focusing collecting efforts. In Argentina, the genebank of the Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias of the Universidad Nacional del Litoral (FCA-UNL) holds the most important national germplasm collection for Trichloris crinita and Trichloris pluriflora (31 and 21 accessions, respectively) but due to that previous expeditions were not planned according to any collecting strategy, a low representativeness is expected. Both species are native forage adapted to arid and semi-arid environments. The present study shows how the application of optimized collecting method based on gap analysis and ELC maps can make more efficient collecting activities. In 2013, collecting trips were carried out covering a total itinerary of 4000 km. New accessions collected from key environments were introduced, and the ecogeographical representativeness of the FCA-UNL germplasm collection was contrasted (before and after collecting activities). Results show gains and improvement of the representativeness especially for T. crinita.