Bioversity International: Crop Descriptors

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Germplasm Documentation

- Crop Descriptors

Overview | Crop Descriptors

Descriptors lists are targeted at curators, breeders, scientists and users managing crop genetic resources collections.

For more information about descriptors lists and to access descriptors for specific crops, scroll down or click on the links below.

What are Descriptors Lists?

Each Descriptor List represents an important tool for a standardized characterization system and it is promoted by Bioversity throughout the world. It provides an international format and a universally understood 'language' for plant genetic resources data. The adoption of this scheme for data encoding, or at least the production of a transformation method to convert other schemes to the Bioversity format, will produce a rapid, reliable and efficient means for information exchange, storage, retrieval and communication, and will assist with the utilization of germplasm.

This is particularly important for crops that are covered under the International Treaty on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Countries that have signed the Treaty have agreed to make the germplasm of these crops and information about them available to the public. By using a common language in the Descriptors List, national genebank managers can better fulfill their obligations under the Treaty.

Click for a list of the crops covered under the Treaty (PDF 160 KB)
Click here to find out more about the Treaty

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What do Descriptors Lists describe?

Bioversity encourages the collection of data for all five type of descriptors:

Passport,
Management,
Environment and Site,
Characterization and
Evaluation.

Data from the first four categories - Passport, Management, Environment and site and Characterization - should be available for any accession. The number of descriptors selected in each of the categories will depend on the crop and the importance of the crop's description. Descriptors listed under Evaluation allow for a more extensive description of accession, but generally require replicated trials over a period of time.

Descriptors should be used when they are useful to the curator for the management and maintenance of the collection and/or to the users of the plant genetic resources.

It is recommended, therefore, that information should be produced by closely following the descriptor list with regard to: ordering and numbering descriptors, using the descriptors specified, and using the descriptor states recommended.

The definition and use of the descriptors for the genetic resources documentation can be found in each list.

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Multi-crop Passport Descriptors

The List of Multi-crop Passport Descriptors is a reference tool developed jointly by Bioversity and FAO to provide international standards to facilitate germplasm passport information exchange across crops. These descriptors aim to be compatible with the Bioversity crop descriptor lists and with the descriptors used for the FAO World Information and Early Warning System (WIEWS) on plant genetic resources.

Multicrop Passport Descriptors

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Descriptors for Genetic Marker Technologies

This List of Descriptors defines an initial minimum set of information that is needed to describe a genetic marker technology, and defines community standards for documenting information about genetic markers. This document is targeted to researchers using genetic marker technologies to generate and exchange genetic marker data that are standardized and replicable and provides descriptions of content and coding schemes that can assist in the computerized data exchange.

Descriptors for genetic markers technologies

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