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Preservation of seed viability during 25 years of storage under standard genebank conditions

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Abstract

Maintaining sufficient viability is critical to the sustainability of ex situ conserved seed collections. For this reason, accessions are regenerated when viability falls below a predefined threshold. Viability is monitored by determining the germination ability of accessions at predefined time intervals. Optimizing the frequency of these germination tests, in order to avoid waste of resources, is hampered by the scarce availability of data about seed longevity, particularly for material maintained under genebank conditions. Here we report on the analysis of nearly 40,000 germination test results collected for a wide range of crop species over a 25-years period by the centre for genetic resources, the Netherlands (CGN), where seeds of genebank accessions are dried to 3–7 % moisture content and stored for the long term under near-vacuum in aluminium foil bags at −20 °C. The results indicate that seed viability is well maintained for the large majority of seed lots during the first 25 years after regeneration as only 3.3 % of the monitoring tests revealed below-threshold germination values. It is argued that the majority of these sub-standard seed lots are due to other causes than seed ageing, including dormancy problems and estimation error in germination testing. For material, maintained under the seed management procedures and storage conditions practiced by CGN, it is therefore recommended to delay the first germination monitoring tests to 25 years after regeneration.

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Acknowledgments

The work described in this study was part of the Programme for Statutory Research Tasks regarding Genetic Resources (WOT-03-436) and the Fundamental Research Programme on Sustainable Agriculture (KB-12-005.03-003) both funded by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation. The authors would like to thank Noor Bas, Roel Hoekstra, Frank Menting and Willem van Dooijeweert (CGN) for their contribution to the preparation of the study data. We are also grateful to Noor Bas, Willem van Dooijeweert, Steven Groot, Chris Kik, Bert Visser and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments to improve an earlier version of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Genetic Resources, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    R. van Treuren, E. C. de Groot & Th. J. L. van Hintum

  2. Wageningen University and Research Centre, P.O. Box 16, 6700 AA, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    R. van Treuren, E. C. de Groot & Th. J. L. van Hintum

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  1. R. van Treuren
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  2. E. C. de Groot
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  3. Th. J. L. van Hintum
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Correspondence to R. van Treuren.

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van Treuren, R., de Groot, E.C. & van Hintum, T.J.L. Preservation of seed viability during 25 years of storage under standard genebank conditions. Genet Resour Crop Evol 60, 1407–1421 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10722-012-9929-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10722-012-9929-0

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