Annual General Meeting of the RARe Plant BRCs pillar

After a welcome by the Director of the Genetics and Fruit and Vegetable Improvement Unit, and a presentation of the latest news from the plant pillar of its BRCs and RARe, the programme focused on the following points:

• The deployment of e-commerce sites for infrastructures,
• Collective discussions on optimising collection management,
• The PRO GRACE European infrastructure project,
• The ECPGR Gene Bank Managers Working Group.

Colleagues from the Vegetables BRC presented their collections, followed by researchers from GAFL who illustrated their work with these collections as well as those from the Prunus-Juglans BRC. These two days were enhanced by a number of visits to the resources and facilities at Avignon:

• Experimentation with melon genetic resources and pollinators,
• Tomato, ginger, aubergine and melon propagation greenhouses,
• Prunus core-collection orchard.

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Guests attended the AGM to discuss a range of topics, including:

• The visibility of French collections internationally, presented by Audrey Didier,
• Strengthening resilience through biodiversity, addressed by Philippe Desmeth, member of RARe's ISAB,
• The CGIAR's research areas and their link with GeneBanks, presented by Nicolas Roux, also a member of RARe's ISAB,
• The technical school on seed conservation, led by Michel Verger, from the forestry pillar,
• Discussions on climate risks, also led by Michel Verger.

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These last two topics pave the way for joint events with the plant CRBs. Workshops were also organised on :

• Drafting Data Management Plans,
• Using the OLGA database.

In conclusion, this general meeting provided an opportunity to take stock of the work carried out in recent years.