Safety duplication of the CGN seed collections
Safety duplicates of a genebank collection are of great importance to safeguard germplasm from loss in case of disaster. Therefore CGN has duplicated nearly all (99%) its accessions and accommodated these safety duplicates at different genebanks.
Vise versa CGN has also stored duplicates from other collection holders in their storage facility. The exchange of germplasm safety duplicates follows the so called "black box" approach. The duplicates are stored under optimum conditions, no details are supplied on the material and the safety duplicate holder is not allowed to make any use of the material. The conditions that have to be met in order to facilitate the exchange of safety duplicates are described in detail in section 6.1.4 of CGN's quality manual.
CGN holds about 7.300 safety duplicates of more than 20 collection holders from 13 countries. These accessions are stored at minus 20 0C together with the archived collection and the source material of CGN.
CGN has accommodated its safety duplicates at:
- Horticulture Research International (HRI), Genetic Resources Unit, Wellesbourne, United Kingdom
- Institut fuer Pflanzengenetik und Kulturpflanzenforschung (IPK), Gatersleben, Germany
- John Innes Institute, Norwich, United Kingdom
- Bundesamt fur Agrarbiologie, Linz, Austria
CGN has also triplicated about 87% of their accessions in the Global Seed Vault at Svalbard. Those seeds are also stored under a “black box” arrangement.