Germplasm enhancement and genebanks

In the omics era, new technologies enable genebank curators to extract new and useful information on germplasm accessions and plant breeders and researchers to more efficiently determine breeding value from unimproved or wild germplasm. However, for major crops in intensive agriculture it is likely that germplasm enhancement or pre-breeding methods involving the hybridization of accessions with elite adapted material will be more useful. There are specific versions of pre-emptive breeding strategies that develop multiple introgression populations that incorporate selected genetic diversity of genebank accessions into the elite genetic background of the crop. For many species, including the major crops, but also relatively unimproved crops, such as forages, sets of F1 or BC1 families derived from elite variety x unimproved accession constitute very useful resources for very little cost because the value of incorporating the unimproved material can be discovered in field experiments even for quantitative traits, by expression of new phenotypes.