Rocket: a Mediterranean crop for the world - Bioversity International

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ROCKET GENETIC RESOURCES NETWORK
Table 1. Origin of rocket samples stored at the USDA genebank
Origin No. of samples
USA 1
UK 2
Pakistan 114
Turkey 9
India 9
Egypt 1
Iran 11
Afghanistan 3
Spain 2
Poland 1
Cyprus 1
Czechoslovakia 1
Rocket genetic resources activity at IdG
The Germplasm Institute is one of the over 300 main entities of the CNR, the Italian
National Research Council (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche), and is located in
Bari, southeast Italy. It represents the only Italian genebank sensu stricto, that is the
only public institution specifically and institutionally devoted to plant genetic
resources (PGR) collection, conservation, documentation and evaluation. The IdG
was established in 1970 with the name Germplasm Laboratory (Laboratorio del
Germoplasma) and gained the status of Institute in 1981, when the President of
CNR recognized "its outstanding activity in the preservation of plant genetic
resources of use to the Mediterranean and European agriculture". The Institute
deals essentially with crop germplasm and stores nearly 80 000 accessions
representing more than 40 genera and almost 600 species, including the world’s
sixth largest collection of wheat and the world’s third largest collection of Vicia faba
(FAO 1996). The activity of IdG, from the late 1980s onwards, has been focusing
greater attention on the wild relatives of cultivated species (Perrino 1995).
Before the Rocket Network was launched, rocket species had been receiving
minor attention from IdG collecting teams. Only a few samples had in fact been
collected during these missions organized by IdG until that time. Some collections
had been made in Abruzzi, Lazio, Apulia and Basilicata regions in the mainland
and in Sicily and Sardinia in the islands (Fig. 4). For some samples the exact origin
was unknown since they had been obtained by donation from other institutes. In
all, 32 samples were collected.
Moreover, by examining the status of the collections held at IdG it can be seen
that rocket has never been investigated in evaluation programmes, owing to the
lack of general evaluation projects on the Brassicaceae. Also, because of the
allogamous behaviour of these species, multiplication of the material had been left
at the minimum, if not avoided whenever possible. As a consequence, the samples
of rocket present in IdG were not available for distribution. In general the lack of
activity on these species was due to their minor economic importance which led to a
lesser allocation of money for applied research on these minor species and to a
reduced academic research interest. One of the main achievements of the
Underutilized Mediterranean Species project (UMS) is to have promoted awareness
on these neglected species through the establishment of the Rocket Network.
After the Lisbon meeting, as a consequence of the increased awareness of the
neglected status of the rocket collections, the question of the conservation of the
genetic resources of these species was brought to the attention of the Scientific