Act no. 148/2003 Coll., On Conservation and Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources and Micro-Organisms Important for Nutrition and Agriculture and Amending Act no. 368/1992 Coll., On administrative fees (the law on genetic resources of plants and microorganisms) regulates the basic conditions for the collection, evaluation, documentation, preservation and utilization of plant genetic resources (PGR) important for food and agriculture.
Documentation of PGR, which leads in accordance with § 17 of Decree no. 458/2003 Coll. person in charge of the National Programme, consists of:
a) passport data – the general characteristics of plant genetic resources which are common to all PGR. Currently, the applicable standard is the document Multi-Crop Passport Descriptors (MCPD) issued in December 2015.
b) characterized and evaluation data – assessment of morphological, biological, and biochemical characteristics in the form of descriptors which are genus or species-specific and are evaluated according to the specific descriptors list (classifier) indicating the method of evaluation of expression of each character.
c) storage data –basic storage information is provided for all samples of genetic resources (number of items, date of harvest, date of start of preservation, date of recovery, conservation method and others). Data is Also recorded about provided samples to users.
Since July 2015, the Crop Research Institute has been operating the National documentation system on PGR GRIN Czech (currently in English only).
This new system, adapted to the Czech Republic from a globally recognized system of documentation of genetic resources GRIN Global, was provided to CRI by the workplace USDA / Agricultural Research Service (National Germplasm Resources Laboratory, Database Management Unit, Beltsville). GRIN Global was developed from the original documentation system GRIN in cooperation with USDA Agricultural Research Service, Bioversity International and the Global Crop Diversity Trust.
System GRIN Czech is, in cooperation with the USDA / ARS, constantly updated.
Ordering PGR
GRIN Czech database is available not only for information on PGR, but also for ordering samples online: https://grinczech.vurv.cz/gringlobal/search.aspx
According to the rules of the National Programme for the Czech Republic were established the following principles for providing PGR:
– for the purpose of breeding, research and education samples are provided free of charge
– amount of samples provided to the users depends on the biological properties of the species; for a standard seed sample size is considered to be 30-50 germinable seeds
– vegetatively propagated species is one sample size typically in the range 3-10 regenerating parts (grafts, in in vitro samples, explants, apex, microtubers)
– one user (department) is entitled to ask, from an authorized person or the participants of National Programme, maximally per a year:
30 samples for self-pollinated species
20 samples for cross-pollinated species
10 samples of vegetatively propagated species