Investigation of genetic resources of cultivated plants in Lithuania

Abstract

The programme “The Scientific Researches of Plant Genetic Resources” was carried out in 2004–2008. In total, 10 reseach projects were launched on plant genetic resources at 8 institutions (Lithuanian Institute of Agriculture (LIA), Lithuanian Forest Research Institute (LFRI), Lithuanian University of Agriculture (LUA), Vilnius University (VU), Lithuanian Institute of Horticulture (LIH), Institute of Botany (IB), Kaunas Botanical Garden (KBG), Vilnius Pedagogical University (VPU)). Scientific researches of plant genetic resources (PGR) are carried out in cereal and grain legume crops, forage and turf grasses, industrial crops, vegetables, orchard plants, wild and underutilized small fruit, medicinal and aromatic plants, ornamental plants, natural and induced mutants, forest trees and shrubs. Participants of the PGR network had a little more than 28500 accessions in their field collections, and about 9200 accessions are of local origin and reach 32.2% of the total accession number. In the Plant Gene Bank long-term storage, seeds of 2385 accessions are kept. The main purpose of this programme is to collect, accumulate and investigate native pedigree PGR – formerly and recently developed varieties of different crops, indigenous populations, valuable breeding lines, to fully investigate them, and on describing their agronomic and biological properties and characters, lodging and disease resistance, to pass them on to the Plant Gene Bank for storage and to use in practical breeding. Keywords: plant genetic resources (PGR), PGR investigation in Lithuania