The INRAE Biological Resource Center ‘BrACySol’: a French centre of valuable Brassica, Allium and Solanum genetic resources for breeding

The INRAE Biological Resource Center ‘BrACySol’ belongs to BRC4Plants, the plant network of the French Research Infrastructure of Agronomic Biological Resource Centers (AgroBRC-RARe). It preserves more than 15,000 accessions belonging to different cultivated genera: Brassica (cabbage, turnip, rape and mustard), Allium (shallot and garlic) and Solanum (potato and crop wild relatives). The Brassica genetic resources are conserved as seeds in freezers or liquid nitrogen. The Allium resources are maintained by vegetative propagation in fields or greenhouses and the Solanum resources are maintained by vegetative propagation in fields, greenhouses, in vitro or in liquid nitrogen. These collections include old landraces, widespread cultivars, crop wild relatives and original scientific material. The accessions are described with passport, morphological or agronomic descriptors or traits. They have been included in various research programmes, at the national or international level, aiming at characterizing the diversity of these collections, studying the genetics of agronomic traits, developing molecular tools and creating pre-breeding lines helpful for breeding programmes.