Promoting a Plant Genetic Resource Community for Europe

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Plants are the basis of all food, feed and renewable bioenergy production and are essential for the transition from a fossil-based to a bio-based economy. Plant Genetic Resources (PGR) play a key role in ensuring this transition, as well as food security and climate mitigation. More than 2 million plant accessions are preserved “ex situ” in 410 institutes in Europe and associated countries and listed in the EURISCO database; even more diversity is found “in situ” in European farmlands and wild habitats, where it contributes significantly to agricultural resilience and climate mitigation. Detailed information on “ex situ” accessions is, at best, fragmentary, while for “in situ” accessions it is almost non-existent. A considerable part of these resources could be lost over the coming decade due to limitations in the “ex-situ” infrastructure and management, climate change, habitat loss, and invasive/alien species. The roadmap 2016 of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) identifies a clear gap in the sector “Plant facilities – unlocking green power”, i.e. the lack of a European Research Infrastructure (RI) specifically dedicated to PGRs. PRO-GRACE will undertake the first step to fill this this gap, by developing the concept of a novel (RI) dedicated to the conservation and study of PGRs. The concept will describe the proposed distributed structure, governance, economic plan and scientific services of the proposed RI, and will be the basis for a full proposal at the next ESFRI call. If implemented, this new RI will aim to catalog, describe, preserve and enhance European plant agrobiodiversity, and translate the results into conservation practices and agricultural innovation, and will collaborate with global organizations dedicated to Plant Genetic Resources and with other established ESFRI RIs working on complementary fields. (eg ELIXIR, EMPHASYS, DISSCO, LIFEWATCH, MIRRI).