Agricultural plants

Similarly to other countries, diversity of agricultural systems has been decreased also in the Czech Republic. Diversity of local well-adapted landraces has been replace by a much narrower spectrum of not too genetically distant bred cultivars during the last century – and especially during the last 40 - 50 years. In many cases, valuable and irreplaceable resources were lost.

Activities regarding plant genetic resources have been developed and co-ordinated by the Research Institute of Crop Production Prague, where also the National Information System on Genetic Resources and the National Gene Bank have been established.Basic task of the work on genetic resources is their maintenance for next generations. Therefore, fast regeneration of endangered accessions and their conservation under standard conditions is very urgent, especially in seed propagated species, where part of collections is still maintained out of the gene bank and will have to be regenerated first. There were 7,163 accessions regenerated in 1997 and 4,160 of them were transfered into the active collection in gene bank (-5°C), accessions of local origin also in duplication to base collection (-15°C). Institutions involved in the National Programme distributed 2 807 samples to local users and 1,461 accessions were sent abroad. Total number of samples in collections reached 50 thousands.