ABSTRACT
There are more than 1,300 national and regional germplasm collections, of which 397 are maintained under medium-or long-term storage conditions, besides the gene banks of International Agricultural Research Institutes (IARI) around the world, according to the Report on the State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources (International Plant Genetic Resources Institute [IPGRI], 1996) presented at the International Technical Conference on Plant Genetic Resources held in Leipzig, Germany, in 1996. The establishment, scale, and capacities of the gene banks as well as the kinds of genetic resources conserved vary.
