China has a large barley germplasm collection which has not been well characterized and is therefore underutilized. The Bmy1 locus encoding the β-amylase enzyme on chromosome 4H has been well characterized in the worldwide barley germplasm collections due to its importance in the malting and brewing industry. The Bmy1 locus was chosen as an indicator to understand genetic potential for improvem...

The sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas L.) is a crop of great importance in developing countries, as a food staple, for animal feed, and potentially for biofuel. Development of cultivars adapted to specific regions within these countries would be useful. To start a breeding program, the first step is the establishment of a germplasm bank. We initiated a sweet potato germplasm bank with accessions co...

Commercial plantations of pejibaye (Bactris gasipaes Kunth, Palmae) are expanding in tropical America to supply the heart-of-palm market. The heart-of-palm is a gourmet vegetable composed of the tender unexpanded leaves in the palm's crown. Both spiny and spineless germplasm is available to growers, but there are no clear data on the superiority of either. Comparisons made among populations, am...

Castor (Ricinus communis L.) is an important non-edible oilseed crop that can potentially be used as feedstock for biodiesel production. There are 1033 accessions in the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) castor germplasm collection. The range of oil content in these accessions has never been surveyed. For exploiting castor as a feedstock for biodiesel production, the entire USDA ca...

Papaya (Carica papaya) is an important fruit grown almost throughout Bangladesh. The study was conducted to determine the physico-chemical characteristics of 20 papaya germplasms and to develop products (jam and squash) from papaya available in the south western regions of Bangladesh. The experiment was laid out in the completely randomized design (CRD) with three replications. Papaya fruits we...

Xanthoceras sorbifolium Bunge has great potential for producing biodiesel. In order to select and evaluate appropriate germplasm to produce biodiesel, we analyzed the genetic diversity of Xanthoceras sorbifolium Bunge germplasm based on morphological traits and simple sequence repeats (SSRs) in this study. Fifty-six germplasm samples were evaluated using nine morphological traits and 23 SSR loc...

Characterization of germplasm by DNA-markers provides a tool for precise germplasm identification and a quantitative assessment of genetic diversity. The genetic structure of the durum wheat germplasm grown in the Mediterranean basin varies largely from traditional landraces and cultivars characterized by a high versatility, to the modern varieties characterized by high yield potential, wide ad...

Santalla, M., Amurrio, J. M. and De Ron, A. M. 2001. Food and feed potential breeding value of green, dry and vegetable pea germplasm. Can. J. Plant Sci. 81: 601–610. Pea is an important grain legume and vegetable in the South of Europe where it is grown on small farms and gardens using traditional varieties and methods during the winter. Variability in old, unimproved varieties needs to be det...

Efficient methods to explore plant agro-biodiversity for climate change adaptive traits are urgently required. The focused identification of germplasm strategy (FIGS) is one such approach. FIGS works on the premise that germplasm is likely to reflect the selection pressures of the environment in which it developed. Environmental parameters describing plant germplasm collection sites are used as...