Rice genetic resources at CIRAD and the European rice collection

A collection of rice genetic resources is maintained in cold storage rooms in Montpellier, France. It has approximately 9,000 germplasm accessions, whose collection started in the early nineteen-sixties. It mainly consists of improved varieties, landraces and, to a lesser extent, wild forms of the rice species complex (O. sativa, O. glaberrima, O. longistaminate, O. breciligulata , O. rufupogon, etc...). In addition, a new type of seed material is now maintained in our gene bank, namely seeds of Rice Recombinant Inbred Lines populations developed by breeders for molecular studies. Cirad conventional rice accessions are divided into four collections: 1) The basic collection with about 5,300 accessions originating from many countries and breeding programs world-wide; 2) The African landrace collection with about 2,300 accessions originating mainly from West Africa; 3) The MiniGB, which is a work representative collection of O. sativa with 242 accessions established on the basis of their enzymatic diversity; 4) The European collection drawn from the European project "Constitution, description et gestion dynamique des ressources génétiques à vocation européenne" implemented from 1996 to 2000 with French, Italian, Greek, Portuguese and Spanish partners. After the evaluation of about 1,650 accessions, this collection gathers 430 no-duplicated accessions well adapted to the European conditions. Each entry is well documented for passport data, morpho-agronomic traits, disease resistances, grain characteristics and genetic pattern for SSR molecular markers. All these data were used to develop a computer database managed through a CIRAD-developed software called SISTER. This software was built-up to save and treat with the same interface all our gene banks. This adaptive software was here implemented for rice. The four collections, their availability and the application of SISTER software to the European rice collection, are presented in details. (Résumé d'auteur