Germplasm health laboratory
The agreement between CIAT and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture of the United Nations (FAO) implies for the Germplasm Bank of the Genetic Resources Program the conservation of a piece of the agricultural heritage of 141 countries to date, with 65,505 materials, 745 plant species of beans, cassava and tropical pastures. This responsibility of conservation is associated to the distribution of samples of this heritage (517,916 samples to 136 countries to date), according to a set of rules defined by the countries within the Treaty, and plant health standards established by the Instituto Colombiano Agropecuario (ICA).
The Germplasm Health Laboratory (GHL) of the Germplasm Bank of CIAT has the responsibility to verify the phytosanitary status of the germplasm distributed by the genebank and other CIAT programs, at national and international level, certifying that is free of diseases of importance quarantine. The baseline of the Germplasm Bank is that all conserved materials must be certified materials, and available for distribution.
The methodology used to certify the health of the genetic materials for transfer is based on the results of the inspection during the production, and the processing of the seeds, in addition to the results obtained during the analysis of health in the laboratory. The laboratory examines samples for pathogens of quarantine interest that occur in production places or that are considered as a significant health risk in the host country or the country of destination.
In the case of beans and tropical pastures the GHL examines seed samples for the diagnosis of quarantine pathogenic fungi, bacteria, viruses, and occasionally nematodes and beetles, affecting the germplasm.
In the case of cassava, the plant material for germplasm exchange is produced in vitro; therefore, the probabilities of contamination by bacteria, fungi and insects are almost nil. For this reason, the indexing process is based on the detection of viral diseases of quarantine importance, using for its detection biological, serological and molecular methods.
Additionally, investigations are conducted in this laboratory on the management and characterization of quarantine pathogens in order to standardize new diagnostic methodologies that are more efficient and sensitive