Cost Action 871

highlights-important dates

April 29 - 30, 2010 : WG1 meeting in Poznen, Poland

Feb 7 -11, 2011 : Final COST 871 meeting at Angers, France

- STSM Call 6 : new call for STSM applications : deadline for submitting applications is 30 November 2009

Updates

- International Symposium on Cryopreservation in Horticultural Species Leuven, Belgium from 6 to 8 April, 2009. document, website , abstract book

- COST871 Presentation : ppt-presentation

Meetings

- Reports available : see Meetings

Training school

- Reports available : see Training - School

STSM

- STSM Call 6 : Guidance Notes for STSM applications.doc

- Reports available : see STSM

ABSTRACT

Plant germplasm stored in liquid nitrogen (-196°C) does not undergo cellular divisions. In addition, metabolic and most physical processes are stopped at this temperature.

Therefore, plant germplasm preserved under cryogenic storage can be maintained for very long periods of time and problems that are typical for storage in the active growth state, like genetic instability and the loss of accessions due to contamination, loss of vigour and totipotency and human error during continual subculturing are overcome. So far, cryopreservation procedures have been developed for the in vitro tissues and non-orthodox seeds of about 200 plant species. There are, however, still a very limited number of examples in Europe where cryopreservation is used routinely for plant germplasm conservation. This is mainly due to:

the unavailability of efficient and robust cryopreservation protocols applicable to many plant species and diverse germplasm types;
limited awareness of plant researchers unacquainted to recent developments in cryogenic storage methods;
lack of coordinated research on plant cryopreservation.

To address these shortfalls, the goal of this COST Action is to create a network that brings together European scientists with an expertise and/or interest in plant cryopreservation with the main aim of developing efficient cryopreservation procedures.

Emphasis will be placed on using this approach as complementary technique for the preservation of crops that are vegetatively propagated and/or produce non-orthodox seeds with a focus on under-utilised crop species grown and/or conserved in Europe and their wild relatives.

The network, once formed, will also alert and inform stakeholders in plant breeding and conservation practitioners who require cryopreservation to implement and underpin sustainable crop plant breeding programmes.

Situation of plant genetic Resources ?

It is estimated that up to 100,000 plants, representing more than one third of all the world's plant species, are currently threatened or face extinction in the wild. In Europe, particularly, biodiversity is seriously threatened as indicated by the following figures:

64 endemic plants of Europe have become extinct in recent decades
24% of the species/subspecies of certain groups of European plants are in danger to be lost
Agricultural intensification has reduced the area under wetlands in Europe by some 60 % in the last decades with consequent threats on biodiversity.

In the past, most plant species and varieties were grown and improved because of their high adaptability to local microclimates and environments.

Breeding projects developed during last century were mainly addressed at increasing production capacities and often other intrinsic qualities (e.g. nutrients, healthy molecules and secondary metabolites, social and environmental enrichment traits) were secondary to this objective.

Focusing breeding programmes across a narrow genetic base has consequentially relegated many potentially valuable plants to a marginal position with respect to the conservation of their genetic resources. So much so that many under-utilised crops, wild relatives and ancient and archived cultivars are now at high risk of genetic erosion.

Recently, interest has been manifest in prospecting for new and rediscovering older utility crop plant species, many of which have important potential applications in human and animal health and well-being and environmental stability.

The importance of conserving a wide crop genetic base has been realised by many European Governments which have taken initiatives to promote the establishment of plant germplasm collections. As a consequence since the 1970s, large numbers of landraces and wild relatives of cultivated crops have been sampled and stored in ex situ gene banks. It is estimated that 6 million samples of plant genetic resources are now held in national, regional, international and private gene bank collections around the world (IPGRI (2004) In:
http://www.ipgri.cgiar.org/themes/human/economics.htm).

Whilst significant advances in ex situ crop conservation have been made, the process is still limited by the special needs of difficult to preserve germplasm types.

"Classical" ex situ storage

Storage of desiccated seeds at low temperature, the most convenient method to preserve orthodox plant germplasm, is not applicable to crops that do not produce seed (i.e. vegetatively propagated) or produce seed that is either non-orthodox or intermediate in storage behaviour.

Non-orthodox seed cannot be dried to moisture contents low enough to permit low temperature storage; typically they are produced by tropical species. Moreover, in the case of plant breeding programmes and especially those implementing biotechnology, plants are vegetatively propagated in order to preserve their unique genomic constitution.

Examples include cultivars of soft and top fruits, timber and ornamental trees. Preservation of field collections is the present and often only option for many categories of crop plants, but this is a high risk strategy, especially if it is not underpinned by more secure conservation measures. Field genebanks holding rare and valuable actively growing plant germplasm can be lost (genetic erosion) as a result of pests, diseases and adverse weather conditions and man-made impacts (conflict and changes in land use). Moreover, maintenance of clonal orchards is labour-intensive and expensive.

On balance, whilst maintenance of in vitro collections is labour-intensive, it provides a more secure contingency option to field genebanking. But there are also risks of accession loss through contamination, facilities failure, human error and somaclonal variation. The latter arises from mutations that occur spontaneously in tissue culture, with a frequency that increases with repeated subculturing and as it is heritable in regenerated plants it has important implications for breeding programmes.

Cryopreservation

In the context of the present options available for germplasm conservation, cryopreservation is the method of choice for the long-term ex situ conservation of plant genetic resources and it provides a complementary approach and additional security for germplasm already held in the "active growth state".

The longevity of cryopreserved germplasm is well proven by other sectors. Bull sperm can be successfully stored in liquid nitrogen for more then 50 year without impairing its viability.

The advantage of cryopreservation is that the material can be stored:

in a stable way
for the long term at relatively low cost and
in disease-free conditions.

In addition, cryopreservation has important applications for plant germplasm used in the biotechnology and health care industries.

It is extremely useful for the safe, long-term storage of plant cells and tissues that have specific metabolic characteristics, for example, phyto-medicinals, alkaloid-producing cell lines, hairy root cultures, genetically transformed and transformation-competent culture lines.

Recently, it has been proven that cryotherapy can be successfully applied to eradicate viruses from, for example plum, banana and grape.

Whilst plant cryopreservation offers considerable advantages as compared to the cryogenic storage and banking of microbial, mammalian and medical cells, plant cryopreserved genebanks are still in their infancy.

This is largely due to the fact that plant conservationists are required to cryopreserve a very broad range of genetic diversity which behaves differentially towards cryopreservation. Even within one species different varieties and tissue types behave heterogeneously towards cryopreservation.

In addition, European research in cryopreservation of plant germplasm is lagging behind that of other regions. This is because it is limited, dispersed and lacks the focus of the more integrated strategies of other countries. For example, the National Seed Storage Laboratory (NSSL) of Fort Collins, USA; the National Clonal Germplasm Repository (NCGR) of Corvallis, USA; the National Institute of Agrobiological Resources (NIAR) of Japan and the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR), India apply cryopreservation on a larger and concerted scale for respective plant species and crop plant groups.

Initiatives in Europe are presently limited, fragmented and uncoordinated. Therefore a collaborative research infrastructure designed to assist plant cryopreservation through networking agendas is urgently required in Europe.

This is essential in order to ensure that the plant cryopreservation sector plays 'catch up' with (i) other European areas in the animal and medical sciences which use cryopreservation on a routine basis and (ii) other countries and economic regions (USA, India, S.E Asia, Japan) that already have large-scale, nationally and regionally coordinated cryogenic genebanking facilities that support their crop plant and phyto-products industries.

Declaration

The signatories to this "Memorandum of Understanding", declaring their common intention to participate in the concerted Action referred to above and described in the "technical Annex to the Memorandum", have reached the following understanding:

The Action will be carried out in accordance with the provisions of document COST 400/01 "Rules and Procedures for Implementing COST Actions" the contents of which the Signatories are fully aware of.
The main objective of the Action is to improve and apply technologically advanced techniques for plant genetic resources conservation of crops that are grown and/or conserved in Europe with main emphasis on long-term conservation through cryopreservation.
The economic dimension of the activities carried out under the Action has been estimated, on the basis of information available during the planning of the Action, at Euro 38 million in 2005 prices.
The Memorandum of Understanding will take effect on being signed by at least five Signatories.
The Memorandum of Understanding will remain in force for a period of 4 years, calculated from the date of the first meeting of the Management Committee, unless the duration of the Action is modified according to the provisions of Chapter 6 of the document referred to in Point 1 above.