Conservation and exchange of genetic resources in major vegetable crops

Abstract

Vegetables, with higher productivity compared to other crops, are nutritionally superior apart from containing numerous phytochemicals. Increasing production, productivity and quality of vegetables through breeding programmes to develop high yielding, biotic, abiotic stress tolerant/ resistant and quality is of paramount importance. Plant genetic resources are essential basic raw materials to meet the current and future needs of crop improvement programmes. In India, NBPGR maintains base collections of different vegetables in the Long-Term Storage in National Genebank. A total of 60 germplasm accessions with unique traits have been registered in different vegetable crops. It also introduces trait-specific germplasm from foreign sources meeting the requirement of breeders in National Agricultural Research System. Further efforts are needed to collect and introduce diverse trait-specific germplasm and evaluation for developing core and mini-core for efficient utilization of germplasm to develop climate-resilient varieties.