The INRAE Prairies genebank for ex situ conservation of forage and turf species in France

In France, INRAE (Institut national de recherche pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement - French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment) maintains a genebank of grass and legume perennial species for forage and turf usages in the research unit P3F located in Lusignan (region Nouvelle-Aquitaine). This genebank is a component of the plant pillar (BRC4Plants) of the French National Research Infrastructure RARe. Collections comprise natural populations collected across France and other countries, landraces, cultivars removed from registration lists and some scientific materials. 967 accessions are currently available for distribution, among which 852 are available in the frame of the Multilateral System of Access and Benefit-sharing of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The genebank policy has been to set up core collections of the main forage and turf species diversity and to apply a high standard of conservation and regeneration to collections of relatively small size. During past decades, genetic resources held by the genebank highly contributed to the breeding of forage and turf cultivars in France and to various scientific studies. Recently, high-throughput genotyping of accessions has provided unprecedented means to discover phylogeographic patterns and genomic adaptation in natural populations of perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) and to understand the breeding history of lucerne (Medicago sativa L.). Such approaches open promising prospects for future genetic adaptation of forage and turf species to changing environmental conditions and new usages.