Overview of European genebank collections

Across Europe, more than 400 institutes in 43 countries conserve PGR in ex situ and field collections, with at present more than 2 million accessions recorded in EURISCO (Kotni et al., 2023). These holding institutes vary greatly in size, capacity and mandate within national conservation programmes, with documented collections of between one (recorded by 22 holding institutes) and more than 680,000 accessions (by the Nottingham Arabidopsis Stock Centre NASC, Figure 1A). Figure 1B shows the number of genebanks conserving the most represented genera (excepting Arabidopsis), with collections of more than 100 and 1,000 accessions emphasized, further highlighting the diversity in size of European genebanks. Thirty-four countries have safety-duplicated parts of their collections in genebanks located in other countries or in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, although overall, only 5.4% of European ex situ accessions have been added to the Svalbard Seed Vault so far (Figure 1C, (Asdal, 2025)). The collections cover more than 6,500 different genera of crop species and their wild relatives (CWR) stored as seeds, in vitro, in cryo or field collections and provide long-term storage of the plant reproductive material. Reviewing the biological status of material in the collections (Alercia, Diulgheroff, & Mackay, 2015), wild or natural materials (code 1xx) represent around 13% of collections but have the greatest diversity with 6,185 genera (Figure 1D). Around 15% of the collections are traditional cultivars and landraces (code 300), with 599 genera represented. The largest part of the documented collections are breeding materials (code 4xx) and advanced/improved cultivars (code 500) with together ~44% of the documented accessions, covering 473 and 549 genera, respectively. Material of unknown status (999 or NA) makes up ~27% of accessions, representing more than 1,600 different genera, highlighting the need to improve knowledge of the European genebank collections and their documentation. A coordinated system for in situ conservation of PGRs and its documentation is still in its infancy, with a recent extension of EURISCO facilitating the documentation of in situ populations of CWR. Information on in situ conserved PGR is more difficult to review as data are slowly being inserted into the public domain.

Survey of EU-funded research on plant genetic resources

In the European research strategy, funding has been made available through the 7^th Framework Programme and Horizon schemes to support research on genetic resources and breeding, providing crucial innovation towards developing more sustainable agrosystems in the face of changing environments. Research and innovation actions create platforms for collaborative research consortia that connect institutions from diverse countries and with complementary expertise to produce valuable outputs for the European research agenda. Using a keyword search of all projects recorded in the EU Cordis database we identified 33, 40 and 40 multi-actor projects funded through the FP7, Horizon2020 and Horizon Europe frameworks, respectively (Supplemental Tables 1-3). We focused our survey on these funding mechanisms because they offer frameworks for international cooperation, cover all EU and associated countries and provide the backbone of European research funding. Additional analyses exploring other funding sources (national, bilateral, philanthropic, etc.) would complement our analysis. As per the project descriptions, these addressed various aspects of biodiversity research, agronomy, policy actions and development of research infrastructures. Many of these projects are transdisciplinary, working on the development of methods and practices on a variety of crops and agricultural systems, rather than focusing on specific PGR genera.

Overall, the number of projects on biodiversity, agriculture and PGR funded through EU research actions have increased over time reflecting the increasing importance of related topics in the European research agenda in Horizon Europe (Figure 2A), with an investment of more than 625 million euros. Considering the main topics and crops covered by these projects, there is a clear tendency towards cross-cutting projects covering multiple crops or agrobiodiversity in general, with a focus on breeding (Figure 2B). The main crops studied by these projects were cereals, legumes and Solanaceae, while other vegetables, perennials and non-food crops were represented in fewer projects (Figure 2C).

Survey of research involvement of European genebanks

Within the above-mentioned projects we analyzed the involved project partners to identify those who are holding institutes of PGR included in EURISCO and thus potentially contributing to the projects by providing genebank materials. We identified 40, 28 and 25 projects in H2020, Horizon Europe and FP7, respectively, involving 76 organizations from 25 countries listed in EURISCO (Supplemental Tables 1-4). Some genebanks are embedded in larger organizations and universities (e.g. INRAE, WUR ⁴ , IPK ⁵ ) and therefore their parent institutions may participate in projects in other capacities. Table 1 shows the participation of institutes listed in EURISCO in projects under the different funding schemes disaggregated by countries, highlighting that some countries and organizations are well represented in project consortia, as also reflected in the number of projects per institute (Supplemental Table 4). However, many countries and EURISCO institutes take part in only one project at a time, suggesting limitations exist in organizations to fully participate in and benefit from international research opportunities.

To better understand the role of EURISCO-listed institutes in European research, we contacted genebank managers of the identified organizations to confirm whether they provided PGR accessions to the Horizon or other European projects they participated in and received feedback from 35 institutes (Table 2). Of these, three did not contribute PGR to the projects they participated in, indicating that they played a different role in these projects. In total, respondents listed 29 projects funded by different mechanisms (e.g. Horizon, PRIMA or ERANET as well as the ECPGR EVA project) for which they had provided PGR accessions from their collections. Nineteen genebanks indicated that they had incorporated material developed in 15 Horizon projects back into their collections to make them available for further exploitation, mainly covering different cereals, legumes, Solanaceae and Brassica species. Based on the identified involvement of their institutes in European projects (Supplemental Table 4), these responses suggest that while some organizations are very active in Horizon projects, European genebanks and their collections are not systematically involved or effectively utilized in European PGR-related projects. In addition, European projects working on PGR appear to utilize plant germplasm that may not be documented within EURISCO and included in European national collections, showing an obvious gap in PGR documentation. Lastly, promising plant materials generated by European projects are not systematically introduced in genebank collections for further conservation and exploitation. It would be especially interesting to further research the contributions of genebank collections in terms of the numbers of accessions provided and conserved for projects.

Examples of successful cooperations of genebanks in international projects

Benefits of international cooperation in PGR research

In the three projects highlighted above, partners described the possibility of engaging in active networks and exchanging pre-competitive ideas and knowledge as primary benefits of participation. Novel traits for a more sustainable agriculture have been identified and some partners have already applied approaches and tools developed by these projects to other species and in other projects. Early career researchers in the AGENT and G2P-SOL projects highlighted the opportunity to learn diverse aspects ranging from fieldwork to data curation and analysis, which was facilitated by mentors from different project partners. In general, the standardization approaches followed by both AGENT and EVA are prime examples of how access to data can be facilitated according to FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles (Wilkinson et al., 2016), providing pipelines for data curation and management that will allow their reuse in future investigations. However, while these projects have shown a possible new way of working for genebank data management and collaboration, its long-term adoption and implementation involving the majority of European genebanks and covering more crops would require significant investment and political commitment to provide the necessary framework. At present, the ECPGR Secretariat is best positioned to disseminate standards and methodologies for genebank operations and crop evaluations throughout their European networks.

An assessment of the long-term impact of EU-funded research projects overall is difficult to produce but should consider the availability of generated materials, tools and project data for further research and the level at which project outputs have been exploited after the end of the projects. A well-known issue with project data is that they are often stored in fragmented form, and websites or databases are only maintained for a limited period after projects end. All these considerations call for the need to operate within a more coherent framework that facilitates and promotes genetic resources conservation, documentation and sustainable use, as the Plant Genetic Resources Strategy for Europe (ECPGR, 2021) is advocating and a suitable EU Research Infrastructure might implement.

Our preliminary survey of genebanks involved in EU-funded Horizon projects showed that some genebanks are very active in participating in European research, contributing both materials and relevant expertise in conservation, cultivation, breeding and documentation. On the other hand, a significant number of genebanks with relatively large collections do not participate in many European projects, limiting the use of these collections in international projects and the benefits to organizations from knowledge exchange. In addition, much of the funded research has been focusing on a few staple crops, e.g. cereals, legumes, Solanaceae and Brassicaceae, with minor crops only recently receiving more attention (Figure 2, Supplemental Tables 1-3). The involvement of genebanks in crop improvement, especially in research and pre-breeding projects, should also ensure that the final products (in terms of germplasm materials) of these projects are either fully incorporated into their collections or otherwise made available for further distribution and exploitation (Hanson et al., 2024). It should be noted that inclusion in a genebank collection implies conservation in perpetuity. For some material, such as breeding or research material, this might not always be the proper approach and novel solutions to making project materials available for future use will be needed. Follow-up studies are also needed on the effective use of PGR in breeding and to assess the impact of publicly funded research on PGR. The survey analyzed in this paper highlights the importance of PGR use in a collaborative research framework at both the regional and international levels. This is believed to be the most promising in terms of exploitation of the immense public good that is maintained by genebanks, often with insufficient public funds but with a significant potential economic value (Gollin, 2020). Considering the growing threat of genetic erosion resulting from the changing climate and changing habitats it will also be important to mainstream in situ conservation activities coupled with the assurance that populations of CWR and wild food plants are made available for use in breeding and research (Khoury et al., 2022).

The experiences from the collaborative projects described in this paper, as well as reports from other successful projects at the European level, highlight the benefits to be gained from international cooperation of genetic resources institutes to increase our knowledge on PGR and make them accessible for further research and breeding. Collaborative activities in PGR research and breeding, through the implementation of public–private partnerships and multi-actor projects are imperative to realizing the potential of European PGR in strengthening the bioeconomy along the whole agri-food value chain (Vangheluwe, Jorasch, Nanda, & Jacobi, 2023). Tools and partnership models have been developed, but they may remain ineffective without a permanent coordinated approach and support for the long-term exploitation of project outputs. Similarly, a variety of technical challenges in information management as well as political and institutional considerations for access to PGR will need to be addressed in novel cooperative approaches to enhance innovation in PGR research (Halewood et al., 2018). The Plant Genetic Resources Strategy for Europe (ECPGR, 2021) identified the need for long-term European cooperation, which could be realized through the establishment of a European Research Infrastructure fully dedicated to PGR, currently in the concept development phase through the project PRO-GRACE (https://www.grace-ri.eu/pro-grace).

A European Research Infrastructure to facilitate consolidated research on PGR

The Horizon Europe project PRO-GRACE involves genebanks, research institutes, and non-governmental and stakeholder organizations in developing a framework for collaboration at the European level to assure availability and access to PGR for breeding and research. Within this project, standards have been proposed to provide guidance on PGR documentation, enabling effective linkage between conserved accessions, associated Multicrop Passport Descriptors (Alercia et al., 2015), and associated phenotypic and genotypic data. Surveys have established a baseline of full implementation of quality management systems (QMS) in genebanks and informed deliverables developing recommendations for implementation of QMS in genebanks and the establishment of a Genebank Certification System, ensuring reliable conservation of and access to PGR conserved in genebanks (Hintum & Wijker, 2024). Gap analyses and surveys have identified a clear lack of consolidated PGR research infrastructures within Europe and provided evidence for a need to establish a Europe-wide distributed research infrastructure that would effectively ensure high-quality conservation of PGR, as well as develop state-of-the-art methods, tools and services for their use in research, breeding and cultivation. This approach represents a great opportunity to further develop EURISCO into a FAIR-compliant European PGR information system that is more closely linked to regional and global platforms and integrates previously untapped data from additional sources and further data domains. The concept for a future European Research Infrastructure on PGR (GRACE-RI) covers important aspects which support the implementation of the Plant Genetic Resources Strategy for Europe and align with needs of stakeholders from conservation and use: 1) enhance all PGR collections across Europe to accepted standards through implementation of quality management and upgrade of genebank procedures, 2) improve and consolidate PGR documentation through advances in data integration and management, 3) develop multi-omics and phytosanitary technologies for PGR characterization, enhancing their availability for breeding, 4) assure access to all PGR across Europe through supporting genebanks in meeting legal and phytosanitary requirements, 5) mainstream in situ conservation of PGR, particularly of CWR, to facilitate their availability for research and breeding, and 6) develop scientific services destined to the scientific and breeding communities, as well as programmes for capacity building, training and education to achieve the above-mentioned objectives. Participating countries and institutes will thus create a relevant and well-defined service for the user community, with a significant reduction of redundancies and increased efficiency through the pooling of capacities and expertise. In contrast, continued inaction in this field would mean surrendering to the loss of agricultural and general plant biodiversity which is already threatening our agriculture and ecosystems.