CWR Gene Bank Southwest

WEL WEL
Our Gene Bank for Crop Wild Relatives is part of the National Plan of the Federal Republic of Germany for plant genetic resources.

In a network, which is also funded by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, wild plant species with the potential for human use have been collected all over Germany. This includes wild relatives of important crops such as Asparagus, Celery, Carrot, Hop, but also numerous medical plants. Collected seeds have been compiled into a seed bank - our garden was responsible for the Southwest of Germany (Baden-Württemberg, Rheinland-Pfalz and Saarland). These resource are not only stored, but have to be subjected to continuous quality controlled. At the same time they are characterised with respect to applications, such as breeding of disease-resistant Asparagus or Hop varieties.

Currently, we focus on the Leguminosae in our collection - Green Fertilizer for Agriculture, but also seed proteins with favourable composition are in the focus. In cooperation with the Centro Nazionale di Ricercha in Milano, we currently map our samples by means of a genetic fingerprint, so called Tubulin-Based Polymorphism to prepare applications in frame of a Horizon-2020 project.