| Exploration plans for 1978 22. The Committee endorses the plans now being made under the IBPGR Mediterranean programme for collection activities in 1978 for wheat in Greece, Spain and Portugal, Morocco, Yugoslavia and Albania. The budget proposal to be made for this regional programme will include these missions. 23. The Committee requests information from the Genetic Resources Centre in Ethiopia on its plans for 1978. 24. The Committee notes that analysis of the IBPGR's 1976 N.W. India expedition will determine (in the light of previous missions in the Himalayan region) whether action is needed in W. Nepal in 1978. 25. It is recommended that the Board liaises with the Indian authorities to commence action in 1978 in the following three areas of India : first priority, rainfed area of central India (Madhya Pradesh) ; second priority, Gujarat, chiefly for tetraploid wheat ; and third priority, Rajasthan because of the importance of salinity/alkalinity tolerant germplasm. Conservation facilities 26. Assuming that the designated major wheat base conservation centres will all be able to upgrade to the storage standards requested by the Board, it is noted that facilities for long-term storage, both in these centres and in other centres likely to be associated with them, are adquate for wheat germplasm for the foreseeable future. Conservation of cytogenetic stocks 27. The Committee recognizes that it is necessary to conserve cytogenetic stocks of wheat but recommends that the actual producers and potential users should share the responsibility for maintaining them The Committee agreed that such responsibility did not fall within the terms of reference of the IBPGR. Information and data management 28. The Commitee recommends that the relevant conclusions of the Leningrad Wheat Symposium be adopted, in particular the list of passport descriptors and the list of collection record descriptors (Appendix III). 29. In order to draw up the minimum descriptors for wheat (including Aegilops), the Committee recommends that the Board approves the convening of a small Working Group which should produce a minimum list of taxonomic, morphological, physiological, resistance and quality characteristics. In addition it should produce an inventory of descriptors for evaluation of wheat germplasm currently used in various gene centres and collate a minimum list (see also 33). The list should then be agreed by the Wheat Advistory Committee. 30. The membership of the Working Group is suggested as follows : a scientist to be nominated from the Vavilov Institute, USSR; Dr. M. Tanaka, Japan ; Dr. Virgil A. Johnson, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA ; Mr. L . Seidewitz, FRG ; and the group should liaise with the GR/CIDS team in Boudler, Colorado. 31. The Group should meet in FAO, Rome, in March 1977 and it is estimated that the cost of a 2-day meeting will be $ 6,000. |
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