ABSTRACT
The Indo-Malaysian rainforest is renowned for its great diversity of tropical flora. It has over 25,000 species of flowering plants and is one of the World’s major centers of origin of many species of fruit trees, timber, spices, and medicinal plants. Conservation of these important genetic resources is of vital importance for the survival of future generations. More and more people are becoming aware of the loss of plant genetic resources and the need for environmental protection, hence great efforts are being made to conserve plant genetic resources as crop plants or their wild relatives. National and international programs are implemented for their conservation by various methods and techniques. At present, besides in situ conservation such as national parks and forest reserves, ex situ live collections of these species are also found in arboreta and botanical gardens. Gene banks such as seed banks and in vitro gene banks have been established fairly rapidly all over the world, but the seed banks are limited to orthodox seeds while there is none for recalcitrant seeds, i.e., seeds which cannot tolerate desiccation and freezing temperatures.
