Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T16:32:07.214Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Collection, Maintenance, and Environmental Importance, of the Genetic Resources of Wild Plants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

Peter A. Thompson
Peter A. Thompson
Affiliation:
Royal Botanic Gardens (Kew), Wakehurst Place, Ardingly, Sussex, England.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Plants are major factors conditioning an environment, and conservation of particular environments depends fundamentally on the maintenance of existing plant communities. In many parts of the world, the destruction of such communities is occurring so rapidly and so completely that entire natural systems are subject to, or threatened with, total destruction. In such cases artificial methods of conserving plant germplasm for ultimate regeneration, for supplementing natural populations, for study, or for use by Man as an economic resource, may be of great significance as one possible means of averting total loss. Under less extreme pressures, the availability of representative propagules of significant taxa or populations may be of crucial assistance as an aid to research directed towards a better understanding of factors affecting survival or competitive advantage in the wild, or as a means of providing stocks for assessment of the potential economic value of existing reserves of wild species.

This paper discusses methods of recording, maintaining, and evaluating, collections of populations of wild species. Plant resources of this kind are extremely vulnerable when maintained under artificial conditions, and a very high proportion of collections are lost within a few years, remain unavailable for general use, or fail to be used owing to inadequate documentation. Conservation of plant germ-plasm as an international resource, in a usable form, depends on a wide acceptance and practice of greatly improved methods of documentation, and requires the creation of effective organizations for surveying, maintaining, and coordinating, plant resources on an international scale.

Type
Main Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1975 , pp. 223 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 1975

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barton, Lela V. (1961). Seed Preservation and Longevity. Plant Science Monographs (Ed. Polunin, Nicholas). Leonard Hill, London, and Interscience, New York: xviii + 216pp., illustr.Google Scholar
Budin, K. (1973). The use of wild species and primitive forms in agricultural crop breeding in the U.S.S.R. Pp. 87–97 in European and Regional Gene Banks (Ed. Hawkes, J. G. & Lange, W.). Eucarpia, Wageningen, Holland: 107 pp.Google Scholar
Burgess, S. (1971). The National Program for Conservation of Crop Germ Plasm. Published by the U.S. National Cooperative Program on the Introduction, Screening and Preservation of Plant Material. Univ. of Georgia, Athens, Georgia: 73 pp.Google Scholar
Ellenbero, H. & Mueller-Dombois, D. (1967). Tentative physiognomic-ecological classification of plant formations of the earth. Berichte iiber das geobotanische Forschungsinst. Riibel, Zürich, 37, pp. 21–46.Google Scholar
Fosberg, F. R. (1967). A classification of vegetation for general purposes. Pp. 73–120 in Peterken, G. F.: Guide to the Check Sheet for IBP Areas. IBP Handbook No. 4, Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford and Edinburgh: x + 133 pp.Google Scholar
Goldsmith, F. B. (1974). An assessment of the Fosberg and Ellenberg methods of classifying vegetation for conservation purposes. Biological Conservation, 6(1), pp. 3–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Konzak, C. F. (1973). Standardized documentation procedures for germ-plasm collections. Pp. 28–36 in European and Regional Gene Banks (Ed. Hawkes, J. G. & Lange, W.). Eucarpia, Wageningen, Holland: 107 pp.Google Scholar
Konzak, C. F. & Dietz, S. M. (1969). Documentation for the conservation, management and use of plant genetic resources. Econ. Bot., 23, pp. 299–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, E. H. (1972). Storage environment and the control of viability. Pp. 24–58 in Viability of Seeds (Ed. Roberts, E. H.). Chapman & Hall, London: ix + 448 pp., illustr.Google Scholar
Sayers, C. D. & Gaman, J. H. (1972). Gene-banks: a casestudy with Teesdale species. Jour. Roy. Hort. Soc, 97, pp. 478–81.Google Scholar
Seidewitz, L. (1974). Thesaurus for the International Standardization of Genebank Documentation. Part 1, Cereals (Inch Maize, Rice, Sorghum). Published by Institut für Pflanzenbau und Saatgutforschung, Braunschweig-Völkenrode, F. R. Germany: 113 pp.Google Scholar
Thompson, P. A. (1970). Seed banks as a means of improving the quality of seed lists. Taxon, 19, pp. 50–62.Google Scholar
Thompson, P. A. & Brown, G. E. (1972). The Seed Unit at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Kew Bulletin, 26, pp. 445–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, T. C. (1974). An Index of the Living Plant Collections in the British Isles. Published by the Bentham-Moxon Trust, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Surrey, England: 55 pp.Google Scholar