ICARDA,PO Box 5466,Aleppo,Syria
Mini-biographyDr. Furman received her B.S. degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Agronomy and South Asian Studies. She lived several years in Nepal and India before attending the University of California-Davis where she obtained a M.S. degree in Agronomy with an emphasis on genetic resources conservation and utilization. She has a Ph.D. in genetics from North Carolina State University. Dr. Furman has worked as a university professor, wildlife conservation geneticist, free-lance genetic resources and biotechnology specialist and most recently as the Legumes Germplasm Curator at ICARDA. She is currently also the Interim Head of the Genetic Resources Unit at ICARDA. Dr. Furman’s research emphasizes diversity and phylogenetic analyses of genetic resources.
Legumes genetic resources at ICARDABonnie J. Furman. ICARDA, PO Box 5466, Aleppo, Syria
b.furman@cgiar.orgThe International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) has a global mandate for lentil and faba bean improvement and as such houses the largest collections globally for these species. ICARDA also has the regional mandate for chickpea and forage legumes. The grain legumes collections comprise almost 50% of the ICARDA genetic resources with over 48,000 accessions comprising some 105 species. In addition, ICARDA maintains over 13,000 accessions of Medicago and Trifolium species. Over 70 % of food legumes and over 30 % of forage legumes have been characterised for important agro-morphological traits of interest to plant breeders. Work is on-going to increase characterisation data.
All of the ICARDA legumes collections are covered by the International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources and are a global public good. Requests for seeds are provided free of charge upon agreement of the Standard Material Transfer Agreement.
The information presented will be aimed at facilitating the exploitation of ICARDA genebank by legume breeders and will provide information on the collection content, characterisation data, and information about how to access material of interest.
