Safflower, Carthamus tinctorius L. - Bioversity International

50 Safflower. Carthamus tinctorius L.
other international organizations. Involvement in safflower includes, among other
things, the provision of a clearing-house for articles to the annual Sesame and Safflower
Newsletter published by Dr José Fernández-Martínez in Córdoba, Spain and
supporting international conferences.
6.1.1.2 IBPGR/IPGRI
Soon after its formation in 1974, the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources
(IBPGR) established crop and regional priorities for collecting of germplasm. Since
then, IBPGR has encouraged, and at times assisted, national programmes to develop
local collecting priorities. In consultation with Dr A. Ashri of the Hebrew
University in Rehovot, Israel, IBPGR has developed a descriptor list for safflower to
assist in the documentation of collected germplasm (Engels and Arora 1991). This
list was finalized by a subcommittee headed by N.M. Anishetty during the First
International Safflower Conference at Davis, California in 1981. Documentation
data were divided into three categories:
● Passport (accession identifiers and information recorded by collectors);
● Characterization (characters which are highly heritable, can be seen easily and
are expressed in all environments);
● Preliminary Evaluation (estimates for a limited number of traits thought desirable
by users of a particular crop).
Descriptors and descriptor states must be properly coded or numbered, to facilitate
use of the documentation. For safflower, the Passport data are divided into 10 ‘accession
data’ and 15 ‘collection data’ groups; the Characterization and Preliminary Evaluation
data are categorized into 5 site data and 25 plant (i.e. vegetative, flower/fruit,
seed) data groups. The complete descriptor list for safflower is available from IBPGR’s
successor organization, the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI).
In 1986, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR),
of which IPGRI is a member, extended the former IBPGR’s mandate as follows: “To
further the study, collection, preservation, documentation, evaluation and utilization
of the genetic diversity of useful plants for the benefit of people throughout the
world. IBPGR shall act as a catalyst both within and outside the CGIAR system in
stimulating the action needed to sustain a viable network of institutions for the conservation
of genetic resources for these plants” (Engels and Arora 1991).
From 1978 to 1989, IBPGR supported 15 collecting missions which, among a diversity
of crops, acquired 82 safflower accessions from Algeria, China, Egypt, Ethiopia,
Libya, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen (Rao and Zhou 1993).
6.1.2 Major national collections
6.1.2.1 China
The Safflower Research Group of the Beijing Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy
of Sciences, headed by Prof. Li Dajue, has collected, evaluated and documented
safflower accessions with the support of IBPGR since 1989, with China having been