ECPGR - Vegetables Networks: Allium Working Group

The Allium Working Group was established in 1982 as one of the original six Working Groups developed during the first Phase of ECPGR. The Group has met six times, developing and updating workplans at successive meetings. The last Working Group meeting (sixth meeting) was held in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, October 1997.
An ad hoc meeting on vegetatively propagated Allium was held in IPK Gatersleben, Germany, May 2001.
The Group met in a parallel session with the other Vegetables Network Working Groups, during the Vegetables Network meeting, held in Skierniewice, Poland, 22-24 May 2003 (see: report [here], PDF file 850KB). As well, the Group met in a parallel session during the Second meeting of the Vegetables Network in Olomouc, Czech Republic, on 26–28 June 2007.

The work of the ECPGR Allium Working Group benefited significantly from the work programme of the EU GEN RES Allium project (ended 31 March 2000), and the research projects FAIR (1996-2001) and "Garlic and Health" (1998-2003).
Various members of the ECPGR Group were full partners in the GEN RES project, which involved all aspects of genetic resources work on onion/shallot, garlic, leek and chives, including documentation, characterization, regeneration, evaluation, core collection development and the collection of material to fill gaps in the collections.

The main activity in the early period of Phase VI of ECPGR (1998 – 2003) concentrated on making the updated European Allium Database (EADB) available on the Internet. The EADB is formatted in MS ACCESS using the FAO/IPGRI Multi-Crop Passport Descriptors fields plus 4 additional passport fields. The database development was supported through the inputs of the EU GEN RES Allium project and is maintained by the Horticulture Research International, Genetic Resources Unit (HRIGRU), Wellesbourne, UK. The database contains 8426 accessions representing the 5 major Allium crops and the wild taxa from 17 institutions in 13 countries plus the Nordic Gene Bank (NGB).
The determination of the Most Original Sample (MOS) of an accession of a wild species is in the initial phase.

Regarding the development of characterization databases for the various Allium crops, minimum characterization descriptors have been agreed for five crops and related taxa within the genus.
The formats for crop specific characterization files were agreed at the Working Group meetings in Skierniewice (1995) and Plovdiv (1997).

A new descriptor list for Allium has been prepared by IPGRI in consultation with the ECPGR Allium crop descriptor subgroups coordinated by Haim Rabinowitch and Dave Astley. The Descriptors list was published in January 2001.
Collaboration between the GEN RES Allium project crop groups and the ECPGR crop descriptor subgroups developed new characterization descriptors for the specific Allium crops that have been incorporated in the new descriptor list.
The descriptor lists are recommended for broader use in the genebanks of the member countries.

Most national genebanks have developed in isolation. Also material imported for use in research and breeding projects has often been included in genetic resources collections. These factors have inevitably led to the duplication of accessions between collections. Obviously any reduction in duplication will make the management of collections more efficient. However, it is difficult, on a purely morphological basis, to identify duplicates especially for heterogeneous, cross-pollinated material such as onion and leek. A molecular approach to the identification of duplicate accessions would provide additional information for use in the management of the collections.

The situation with garlic is somewhat clearer in that work carried out at IPK Gatersleben on the morphological and molecular (isozyme and RFLP) characterization of garlic clones, has identified a number of groups within the crop. This group classification has subsequently been confirmed by the use of AFLP characterization at Plant Research International, the Netherlands.

There are some very good examples of bilateral agreements for safety-duplication for seed propagated material using a "black box" system between genebanks/national programmes. However, there is still room for improvement with some collections not being safety-duplicated at all. Genebanks hold parallel collections based on joint collecting activities, and some effort has been put towards formalizing a safety-duplicate agreement. The Memorandum of Understanding between NGB and Latvia is an example of cooperation for safety-duplication. That could be extended to other situations.

Regarding vegetatively propagated crops, Czech Republic and Israel formally accepted responsibility for maintenance of the international long-day and short-day Allium field collections until the end of Phase VI of ECPGR (2003). However, the status and future funding of collections of vegetatively propagated crops have been highlighted as a problem by several national programmes. The two main aspects to this problem are firstly who should fund "international" collections and, secondly, the reliable maintenance of duplicate security collections. Inherent to the second comment is the continual requirement for labour for field maintenance, which makes the equivalent of the "black box" arrangement impossible.
Currently, safety-duplications have been established between different countries, but considering the present level of funding, only very limited offers could be made by the Group participants to extend their commitment to this initiative.

The Vegetables Network Coordinating Group (NCG) identified the maintenance of vegetatively propagated crops as a particular problem facing the Allium Working Group. The development of a Consortium for conservation of vegetatively propagated Allium germplasm has been proposed.
At its meeting in Skierniewice (2003) the Group recommended sharing of responsibilities, as follows:

Long-day garlic	Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Spain
Short-day garlic	France, Israel, Spain
Shallot	Czech Republic, Lithuania, NGB
Vegetative leek + Mediterranean (Atlantic) wild species	Greece, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, UK
Continental wild species, cold requiring	Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, Ukraine
Chives and Chinese chives	Netherlands, NGB, UK

There has been good collaboration between partners following the Plovdiv meeting proposal by Joachim Keller, Teresa Kotlinska and Pavel Havranek to offer their taxonomic expertise to colleagues to identify wild Allium taxa. ECPGR supported travel for Reinhard Fritsch, a taxonomy specialist from IPK Gatersleben to visit Pavel Havranek at the RICP Gene Bank Olomouc, Czech Republic, in order to validate the taxonomy of accessions in the collection from the Asian Republics held at RICP Olomouc and RIVC Skierniewice, Poland. Joachim Keller and Reinhard Fritsch also assisted Francisco Mansilla, CIFA Cordoba, Spain, in the identification of wild taxa. There are significant collections of wild Allium taxa that are complementary in their content, e.g. IPK Gatersleben maintain taxa with Sections Rhizirideum and Melanocrommyum, while the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, UK, have concentrated on Section Allium.

Several international agreements between IPK (Germany) and Central Asia Republics (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan) have been established to validate the taxonomic identity of their wild species material. A project funded by the Volkswagen foundation and a project funded by the Ministry of Science (BMBF) of Germany will contribute to the characterization of wild material.
A proposal has been made to structure the wild species genepool, which currently totals 700 species. Only a part of the collection is of immediate value for direct use and breeding. Thus, a number of candidate species have been selected based on the knowledge accumulated during collection missions and prebreeding trials.

For more information or comments:
Please contact the Chair of the Working Group: Mr Dave Astley [click here] and Vice-Chair:
Mr Joachim Keller [click here]