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UK National Fruit Collections | |
Imperial College at Wye represents the UK at the European Cooperative Programme for Crop Genetic Resources Malus/Pyrus Working group.
The first meeting of the ECP/GR Malus/Pyrus Working Group took place in Dublin in 1997. At the meeting it was agreed that a database should be created of Malus accessions maintained at genebanks across Europe. Fifteen members of the Working Group have provided lists of Malus germplasm accessions maintained ex situ. Imperial College staff entered data that were received in electronic format into the pilot European Malus database. The database now contains the names and numbers of more than 20 000 Malus accessions from thirteen countries.
A second meeting of the Working Group took place in Dresden in 2002. At the meeting it was agreed that the member countries work towareds creating a 'European Malus collection'. This decentralized ex situ collection will comprise accessions held by participating genebanks and available for distribution. In the initial stage of development, collection curators will offer accessions by sending a list to the Central Database manager. So far, Germany and the UK have put forward suggestions for accessions to be included in the European collection.
To view the pilot European Malus database, download Euroappl.zip (977 Kb) and decompress the file using Winzip. The database was created in Microsoft Access 97.
Each record contains a variety name, an accession number and an institute code. Where necessary, accession numbers for use in the pilot database were invented, beginning at 1 and numbering the records by the order in which they were supplied. Institutes are identified in the database by a code composed of the ISO country code plus a number or acronym supplied by the FAO. Each record in the database must have a unique combination of institute code and accession number, therefore where an institute supplied more than one record with the same number a letter was added to the accession number.
Multicrop passport descriptors are included as fields in this pilot version of the database, although little information is currently held in the descriptor fields. Future versions of the database will also include Malus specific descriptors.
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nfc@ic.ac.uk | Last updated 13 February 2003 |