CGN cereals collection
The collection consists of accessions of wheat, barley and oat. The basis of the collection is formed by the work collections of the former Foundation for Agricultural Plant Breeding (SVP) and the Department of Plant Breeding of the Agricultural University of Wageningen (IVP). Additional material was added from other, mainly Dutch, institutions and private breeding companies.
While the cereal collection makes up a significant part of the whole collection of the CGN, there is not actively new material added to this collection. This is because the CGN nowadays has a main focus on vegetable crops. Nonetheless there are many requests for cereals, which indicates that the collection is seen as being of interest.
Regeneration and characterization
Because of the size of the cereal collection every year the seed of a couple of hundred accessions are regenerated. This is partly done by ourself and partly in cooperation with breeding companies in the Netherlands.
The winter types are sown in October and the spring types in March at a density of 350 seeds per m2, in plots of 1.25m2 and a row distance of 25cm. The seeds are harvested with a special combine or by hand. During the regeneration, the cultivated accessions can be characterised for a minimal set of traits, using descriptor lists developed by CGN (Koch 1985, Loosdrecht 1985). The wild cereals are regenerated in a greenhouse, with the winter types getting vernalized as seedlings in a cold greenhouse compartment. After flowering, the ears are wrapped in perforated plastic in order to collect the seeds, as the ears of wild cereals fall apart when seeds become ripe.
Evaluation
Evaluation data are available of resistance screenings for some important cereal diseases. These data can be found here on the website, or when browsing through our collection under the header Download. Furthermore, Triticum and Avena accessions from the collection have been analyzed in studies that were done by the Celiac Disease Consortium (Herpen et al. 2006, Salentijn et al. 2009, Broeck et al. 2010, Mujico et al. 2011).
Research
The seeds bags that are destined for distribution are stored at -20°C like the other seeds in the collection. In the past these so called user bags were stored at 4°C, but at a certain moment it became clear that for barley and wheat the seed quality deteriorated rapidly at 4°C. A paper was published about this subject by CGN (Van Treuren et al. 2018).
About the cereal collection papers on a number of topics were published (see references).
References
Hashmi, N.I., L.J.M. van Soest, A.R. Rao, M. Mesken and A. Zahoor(1981) Collecting in Baluchistan, Pakistan. Plant Genetic Resources Newsletter 47: 31-35.
Koch, M.(1985). Descriptorlijst Gerst. CGN/SVP, Wageningen. 7p.
Mujico, J.R., C. Mitea, L.J.W.J. Gilissen, A. Ru, P. van Veelen, M.J.M. Smulders and F. de Koning (2011). Natural variation in avenin epitopes among oat varieties: implications for Celiac. Journal of Cereal Science 54 (1). - p. 8 - 12.
Morris, R. and E.R. Sears (1967). The cytogenetics of wheat and its relatives. In: Quisenberry, K.S. and L.P. Reitz (eds.). Wheat and wheat improvement. Winconsin, American Soc. of Agronomy Monograph no.13: 19-87.
Salentijn, E.M.J., S.V. Goryunova, N. Bas, I.M. van der Meer, H.C. van den Broeck, T.A. Bastien, L.J.W.J. Gilissen and M.J.M. Smulders (2009). Tetraploid and hexaploid wheat varieties reveal large differences in expression of alpha-gliadins from homoelogous Gli-loci. BMC Genomics 10 . - p. 48.
Van den Broeck, H.C., H.C. de Jong, E.M.J. Salentijn, L. Dekking, H.J. Bosch,R.J. Hamer, L.J.W.J. Gilissen, I.M. van der Meer and M.J.M. Smulders (2010). Presence of celiac disease epitopes in modern and old hexaploid wheat varieties: wheat breeding may have contributed to increased prevalence of celiac disease. Theoretical and Applied Genetics 121 (8). - p. 1527 - 1539.
Van Herpen, T.W.J.M., V. Goryunova-Svetlana, J. van der Schoot, M. Mitreva, E.M.J. Salentijn, O.F.J. Vorst, M.F. Schenk, P. van Veelen, F. de Koning, L.J.M. van Soest, B.J. Vosman, H.J. Bosch, L.J.W.J. Gilissen and M.J.M Smulders (2006). Alpha-gliadin genes from the A, B, and D genomes of wheat contain different sets of celiac disease epitopes. BMC Genomics 7, 1. Van Loosdrecht, M.P.H. (1985). Descriptorlijst Triticum. CGN/SVP, Wageningen. 8p.
Van Loosdrecht, M.P.H. (1986). Inventarisatie en documentatie van de Wageningse Triticinae Collectie (WTC). CGN rap. 1986-3, Wageningen. 13p. Van Soest, L.J.M., I.W. Boukema and Th.J.L. van Hintum (1995). CGN does more than collecting and freezing seeds. Prophyta Yearbook 1995. Volume 49: 94-97.
Van Soest, L.J.M. en I.W. Boukema (eds.) (1995). Diversiteit in de Nederlandse Genenbank. Een overzicht van de CGN collecties. Centrum voor Genetische Bronnen Nederland (CGN). Centrum voor Plantenveredelings-en Reproduktieonderzoek (CPRO-DLO), Wageningen. 126p.
Van Soest, L.J.M. and N. Bas (2005). Wheat genetic resources in the Netherlands. In Lipman et al., compilers. Cereal Genetic Resources in Europe, Report of a Cereals Network, First meeting, 2-5 July 2003, Rome, Italy.
Van Treuren, R., N. Bas, J. Kodde, S.P.C. Groot and C. Kik (2018). Rapid loss of seed viability in ex situ conserved wheat and barley at 4˚C as compared to - 20˚C storage. Conserv Physiol 6(1): coy033; doi:10.1093/conphys/coy033.