The Grassland BRC of the Plant Pillar contributes to the coordination of the maintenance of accessions of a major forage grass in European genetic resource centers

The Grasslands CRB (INRAE Lusignan) was coordinator of the ImprovLoliumCol activity of the Forage Species Group of the European Genetic Resources Network ECPGR from 2019 to 2022. This ECPGR activity was a follow-up to the FACCE-JPI ERANET+ GrassLandscape European networked research project (2015-2020) led by the INRAE P3F research unit in Lusignan. The GrassLandscape project had enabled a phenotypic evaluation and high-throughput genotyping of a large panel of 438 natural populations of English ryegrass extracted from the collections of fifteen European genetic resource centers, in order to search for genomic signatures of climate adaptation. The ECPGR ImprovLoliumCol activity completed the referencing of accessions used in the GrassLandscape project in the EURISCO database and secured their long-term availability by encouraging the gene resource centers to maintain them as part of the formal ECPGR AEGIS commitment. Data collected in the framework of the GrassLandscape project, including phenotypic evaluation data of accessions and climatic normals at the sites of origin of the accessions, have been made publicly available through a forage species portal linked to the EURISCO database. Finally, genomic and phenotypic data from the GrassLandscape project were used to establish two core-collection levels that best represent the natural diversity of English ryegrass at the European scale, with 159 and 211 accessions respectively. These two core-collection levels are identified on the EURISCO forage species portal.

Contact :
Jean-Paul Sampoux
Responsable scientifique du CRB Prairies
Unité de Recherche Pluridisciplinaire Prairies et Plantes Fourragères (UR P3F)
Centre INRAE Nouvelle-Aquitaine-Poitiers
86600 Lusignan
jean-paul.sampoux@inrae.fr