Trust Grant

Conserving banana diversity for use in perpetuity: Strengthening the network of collections to improve access to wider diversity and safeguard threatened banana cultivars

Start date	March 2008
End date	March 2011
Total grant	$854,450
Donor	Global Crop Diversity Trust
Location	Asia, Pacific, East & West Africa, Europe
Goal	The project will focus on strengthening collections, exchanges and communities of practice within a worldwide network of field collections, MusaNet, in order to provide access to and promote the use of a wider range of Musa diversity to respond to the diverse and evolving needs of present and future germplasm users.
Brief description	The participants in MusaNet are loosely connected through shared initiatives, regional research networks and information and germplasm exchanges. The effectiveness of the system is constrained by limited capacity and resources in all institutes to manage the entirety of their collections to appropriate standards, and to complete safety duplication, characterization and documentation of accessions. Consequently a significant number of accessions continue to be lost or threatened. This project will focus on regeneration and safety duplication in priority field collections; improving the genetic coverage of the International Musa Germplasm Collection in Leuven, Belgium; improving specific areas of taxonomic understanding and completing cryopreservation of the in-trust collection.
Partners	• National Agricultural Research Institute (Papua New Guinea) • Secretariat of the Pacific Community (Fiji Islands) • Queensland Department of Primary Industry and Fisheries (Australia) • Fruit & Vegetable Research Institute (Vietnam) • University of the Philippines Foundation (Philippines) • Bureau of Plant Industry (Philippines) • Indonesian Tropical Fruit Reseach Institute (Indonesia) • National Research Centre for Banana (India) • Institut de Recherches Agronomiques et Zootechniques (Burundi) • National Agricultural Research Organization (Uganda) • Centre Africain de Recherches sur Bananiers et Plantains (Cameroun) • Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium)
Coordination	Ms Anne Vézina: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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