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Jean-Christophe Glaszmann
Mon 16 April 2007
 CIRAD,Avenue Agropolis,34398 Montpellier Cedex 5,France
Mini-biographyJean-Christophe Glaszmann is Director of the new Department of Biological Systems created in CIRAD (Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement), Montpellier, France, in January 2007. Agronomist and PhD in genetics, Jean-Christophe is an expert in genetic resources, comparative genomics and plant breeding. Employed by CIRAD since 1979, he worked in the Philippines in IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) for 6 years, and moved back to Montpellier in 1987. Jean-Christophe has been on the Board of Directors of Genoplante, and Director of the CIRAD/INRA/Supagro joint research unit “Polymorphisms of interest in agriculture”. He is currently leader of the subprogramme “Genetic Diversity of Global Genetic Resources” of the Generation Challenge Programme from CGIAR, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.
Germplasm reference samples for investigating genetic diversity in legumes
Jean-Christophe Glaszmann
CIRAD, Avenue Agropolis, 34398 Montpellier Cedex 5, France.
glaszmann@cirad.fr
The Generation Challenge Programme (GCP, www.generationcp.org) is a CGIAR programme dedicated to using comparative genomics for taking the best value of large germplasm collection for improving the most important food crops worldwide, in particular for their tolerance to drought conditions. It is made of five subprogrammes, one of which is ‘Subprogramme 1: Genetic diversity of global genetic resources’.
During its first four years of operation, the main activity of SP1 has consisted in applying molecular marker analysis to germplasm samples chosen for including the most meaningful diversity. The main output is in the form of ‘reference samples’.
Reference samples are made of germplasm that will serve as reference for most studies in the crop under consideration. The value of reference materials is manifold: integrating characterisation/evaluation on common materials, taking advantage of complementary potential among partners, revealing correlations among traits, unravelling pleiotropic relationships, associations between markers and phenotypes, epistatic networks, etc.
Typically, the process of identification of a reference sample starts with an initial composite sample of several hundred to several thousand accessions representing the interest of the major users, with documented passport information and some molecular marker data available, hopefully including a core sample in the sense of AHD Brown.
The criteria for choosing materials for a given experiment are commonly a good representation of reference taxonomic entities which are potential sources of genes/alleles or key to understanding crop evolution and the perspective of a contribution to sound correlation analysis by providing a space with little or no structure –star-like sample, homogeneous compartment, admixed interface, etc- for genetic resolution. Criteria also include material comparability –phenology, etc-, material adaptation –phenology, biotic stresses, local preferences, etc-, and integration in local priorities –inclusion of local checks, local breeding populations, etc.-
The legumes taken into consideration in the GCP are groundnut, cowpea, common bean, lentil, pigeon pea and faba bean.
From 1000 to 3000 accessions are being typed with 16 to 50 microsatellites depending on the crop, in various laboratories of the CGIAR at ICRISAT, IITA, CIAT, ICARDA, and at EMBRAPA and INRA. The most advanced groups have already identified reference samples.
A project coordinated by AGROPOLIS is focussing on genes that are candidate for a contribution to drought tolerance. Phylogenetic analyses are conducted across a range of seven species, including two legumes, in order to identify orthologs. Then resequencing across the reference samples will give access to allelic sequence diversity in these crops.
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