Ex Situ Conservation of Plant Genetic Resources: An Overview of Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) and Lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) Worldwide Collections

Abstract

The collection and conservation of chickpea and lentil germplasm has great importance due to their role as a staple food for millions of people. Nowadays, the largest chickpea collection, 41.2% of the total accessions, is held by ICRISAT, while the main lentil collection is stored by ICARDA. The main fraction of both collections is constituted by Indian landraces. In recent decades, several efforts have been made to integrate all genebanks into a global conservation system of plant genetic resources. The release of informatics platforms allowed the creation of virtual genebanks, which are powerful tools routinely consulted by germplasm users. The information available for the chickpea and lentil accessions included in the Genesys and EURISCO platforms has been taken into consideration in this mini review. This review also presents and discusses the strengths and drawbacks of the worldwide collections of both species emerging from the analysis of data obtained by enquiring these two platforms. The availability of core collections is of great utility for germplasm users, while the lack of origin and biological status for a significant fraction of accessions are the main drawbacks. Moreover, this review highlights the necessity of sharing as much as possible of the non-omic and omic characterization data.