Sustainability of In Vitro Genebanks and Cryogenebanks

PGRs are essential components of food, nutrition and livelihood security and in the last few decades significant improvements have been made for better and safe conservation in national and international genebanks. There are several species, which cannot be conserved in conventional seed genebanks and needs alternate strategies. Among different strategies in vitro and cryogenebanks are the only available approaches for safe conservation of difficult species for short- to medium-term and for long-term respectively. In vitro and cryoconservation is in practice for several years, slow growth conservation and cryoconservation protocols are developed in diverse species and many species are successfully and safely conserved in in vitro and cryogenbanks in many countries globally. This paper reviews the priority species and future prospects of in vitro and cryogenebanks.