Phytosanitary Management of ICARDA’s Germplasm Seed Collections for Better Future Use

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed an increasing global concern about the loss of plant genetic
resources, as a result of conflicts, epidemics, earthquakes, etc., which led to disrupting
access to some germplasm and undermining social protection systems, and thus an increase
in global awareness to preserve germplasm for their current and future use. This led
genebanks all over the world to create disaster risk reduction policies to organize activities in
the safekeeping, conservation, and dissemination of germplasm resources. Safety
duplication of base collection at different geographic sites, such as Svalbard Global Seed
Vault, is one of the essential measures. Any procedure must comply with phytosanitary
regulations to enable direct and rapid response for safe germplasm exchange and retrieval.
In order to make sure that germplasm is viable to combat challenges, ICARDA’s Germplasm
Health Unit (GHU) exercises maximum effort to maintain the health status of germplasm
collections, ensure compliance with phytosanitary regulations in international germplasm
distributions, and develop methods to detect and manage seed-borne pathogens to
guarantee minimum loss of genetic resources. In addition, maintaining plant health during
germplasm regeneration is essential to reducing the risk of seed-borne pathogen spread via
future germplasm distributions.