ABSTRACT
The sum total of all the genes and their alleles present in a crop and its related species constitutes its germplasm. It is ordinarily represented by a collection of various strains and related species of the concerned crop species. Germplasm provides the raw materials (genes), which breeders use to develop high yielding, disease resistant, etc., commercial crop varieties. Biotechnology requires germplasm, as both raw material and a source of natural variation. As a way of shaping and using genetic information, biotechnology has implication for germplasm conservation and use. This chapter discusses these opportunities and the allocation of resources. Although biotechnology is commonly thought of as recombinant deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) technology, it is used in a broader sense to include tissue culture, cryopreservation, plant micropropagation and animal regeneration from early embryos. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is an extremely sensitive and accurate method for recovering microgram amounts of single specific DNA sequences present in biological samples at very low concentrations.
