Author
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Irish, Brian |
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Rios, Carlos |
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Goenaga, Ricardo |
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DANIELS, J.W. - Department Of Agriculture - Australia |
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Submitted to: Agricultural Research Service Publication
Publication Type: Other Publication Acceptance Date: 12/23/2015 Publication Date: 12/23/2015 Citation: Irish, B.M., Rios,C., Goenaga, R.J., Daniels, J. 2015. Catalog of banana (Musa spp.) accessions maintained at the USDA-ARS, Tropical Agriculture Reserach Station. Agricultural Research Service Publication. v. 1. Interpretive Summary: Plant genetic resources for agriculturally important crops, like bananas (Musa spp.), are being lost at accelerated rates in centers of genetic diversity/origin. Loses are due to a number of factors including the human impact on habitat, emerging diseases and insect pests as well as changing environmental conditions. Plant collections serve as repositories for important traits that will cope with the ever-changing agricultural crop production systems. For individual plants lines within collections to be exploited, the stakeholder community must understand what is being held. A digital catalog was developed with information (data) collected over a period of ten years for banana genetic resources held at the Tropical Agriculture Research Station. The catalog brings together the information in an easy to understand and condensed format and has been made accessible as a free, downloadable PDF-format document. Information in the catalog includes detailed characterizations and evaluations for important agronomic traits and/or superior performance in the banana collection. The information helps educators, plant scientists, plant breeders and even farmers make best of use of the germplasm by accessing information about specific germplasm, learning about the diversity in the collections and by aiding these stakeholders in refining germplasm requests. Technical Abstract: Banana genetic resources can be found in situ in native habitats in Southeast Asia and the Pacific region. Ex situ collections also exist in important tropical regions of the world as well as in vitro cultures at the Bioversity International Musa Germplasm Transit Centre. Unfortunately, readily available digital images and detailed information on characterization and evaluations is limited or not accessible for many of the banana accessions held in international collections. Therefore, in an effort to make information more accessible, this publication on banana genetic resources held at the USDA-ARS Tropical Agriculture Research Station (TARS) was assembled and made publicly available. The Catalog of banana (Musa spp.) accessions maintained at the USDA-ARS Tropical Agriculture Research Station is for research and educational purposes. It is a tool that has been developed in an effort to consolidate detailed information on specific banana germplasm accessions. The combined data in the form of digital voucher images of particular phenotypic traits, the agronomic traits as well as the molecular data can be used by plant science researchers, by science educators and growers. It can be used by banana genetic resources managers that can use the digital images, the values for particular traits and/or the molecular marker data for comparing and contrasting to their germplasm. Comparisons can be made to determine off-types, synonyms or for contrasting agronomic performance across agro-environments. Growers could use the catalog to better understand diversity in Musa, to learn about the holdings at the TARS and even to choose particular accessions they might want to evaluate on their farms based on the published agronomic performance traits. Although much of the information contained in the catalog is readily accessible (e.g., can be viewed and downloaded) from the National Plant Germplasm System’s (NPGS) Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN-Global) database and the Musa Germplasm Information System (MGIS) database, it is not displayed in the same format (i.e., catalog format). |
