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BBC Midlands Today at Warwick Crop Centre's UK Vegetable Genebank
Following the announcement that Warwick Crop Centre has won a five year contract from Defra to continue to host the UK Vegetable Genebank at the University’s Wellesbourne Campus, BBC Midlands Today discuss with Rosemary Collier and Peter Walley the importance of this store of genetic diversity for breeding into crop varieities of the future to solve farming problems.
Warwick secure Defra contract to store 14,000 crop seed samples
Warwick Crop Centre at the University of Warwick has won a five year contract from Defra to continue to host the UK Vegetable Genebank at the University’s Wellesbourne Campus.
The Genebank is an internationally significant collection of almost 14,000 seed samples from different vegetable crops including carrot onion, lettuce cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli and closely related wild species.
The collection represents the genetic diversity in the genepool of each crop, and is a vital resource for researchers and plant breeders across the world.
“Vegetables are an important component of a healthy diet and the seed resources within the Genebank will support the development of new and improved varieties in the future”, said Dr Charlotte Allender who leads the Vegetable Genebank project.