Creation

The European Cooperative Programme for Crop Genetic Resources Networks (ECP/GR) is a collaborative programme among most European countries aimed at ensuring the long-term conservation and facilitating the increased utilization of plant genetic resources in Europe. The Programme is coordinated by the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI), operates through ten broadly focused Networks dealing with groups of crops or general themes related to plant genetic resources.
In May 2000, in Vila Real, Portugal, the ECP/GR Vegetables Network Coordinating Group recommended also extending collaborative activities to Solanaceae, Cucurbits and Leafy Vegetables and included these crops within the Network’s mandate. A “Informal Cucurbits Working Group” was formed to start collaboration on genetic resources of some Cucurbitaceae species, mainly cucumber, melons, watermelon, gourds, pumpkin, zucchini and other minor cultivated and wild cucurbits. Within this context, some ECP/GR members attended the second meeting of the EU-funded Cucumis melo project GEN RES 108 on “Management, conservation and valorization on genetic resources of C. melo and wild relatives”. This first meeting of the “Cucurbits Informal Group”, held in Adana, Turkey on 19 January 2002 (see article from Newsletter Issue 23, 2002 [here]), brought together most of the European institutions (from EU and non-EU countries) holding important collections of cultivated cucurbits and their wild relatives.
To formalize this networking initiative and to ensure more stable financial support, the Group will submit a request for the establishment of a Working Group on Cucurbitaceae to the next meeting of the Steering Committee of ECP/GR in 2003. A full report of the meeting will be available later in the year from the ECP/GR Secretariat.

Priorities of the Working Group would be to initiate the following activities:

• Compile inventories of Cucurbits germplasm (passport and characterization data) for cucumber, melons, watermelon, gourds, pumpkin, zucchini and other minor cultivated and wild cucurbits, maintained in European genebanks. (Development of a European Central Cucurbits Database, ECCUDB).
  
• Assessment of safety-duplication for collections and planning the transference of safety duplicates to participating base stores in which long-term conservation conditions are available.
  
• Produce harmonized descriptors and protocols for primary characterization.
  
• Produce harmonized protocols for seed regeneration and storage.

For more information or comments:
Please contact the Chair of the Working Group: Dr. Fernando Nuez Viñals

A number of European central crop databases have been established through the initiative of individual institutes and of ECP/GR Working Groups. The following links are examples of it:

• 1 ECP/GR Allium Database
• 1 ECP/GR International Lactuca Database
• 1 ECP/GR Cucurbits Database
• 1 ECP/GR Brassica Database

One of the main task of the Cucurbits Informal Working Group is to develop an European Cucurbits central Database. This database currently under construction will hold passport data and, to varying degrees, characterization and primary evaluation data of the major collections of the cucurbits in Europe. The germplasm accessions are maintained in different European institutes according to international standards. In some cases safety-duplicates are stored in other genebanks, preferably in another country. To request material included in the database, please refer to the donor institutes which maintain the germplasm accessions.

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(European Central Cucurbits Database)

The ECP/GR Cucurbits database