The Tropical Plant Biological Resource Center of the French West Indies: serving agriculture and research throughout the Caribbean

National audiencePlant genetic resources are instrumental in the adaptation of agriculture to social and environmental change. They are the backbone of research and breeding programs aimed at the development and transfer of new crop varieties best suited to consumers’ needs and tastes and to new farming systems. To this aim, plant germplasm collections have been constituted worldwide. Securing such collections requires substantial human and financial investments that can prove difficult to maintain on the long run for small countries and territories such as most Caribbean countries. In Guadeloupe and Martinique, INRA and CIRAD have constituted large plant germplasm collections of tropical crops over several decades. They joined forces in 2010 to create the Tropical Plant Biological Resource Center of the French West Indies (CRB-PT), which is affiliated to both institutions. In this paper, we describe CRB-PT’s collections, services provided to end users and research programs as well as scientific and technical networking strategy