First wild biological germplasm resource bank set up
Chinanews, Beijing, May 10 – China's southwest wild biological germplasm resource bank was recently established in the Kunming Botanical Research Institute.Establishment of the germplasm resource bank is considered as one of the key national science projects in China. The bank was jointly built by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and the Yunnan Provincial Scientific Research Institute, the Science Times reported.
China intends to build the resource bank into a research platform that will play an important role in international science circle and be a first-class base in Asia for the protection and storing of wild biological germplasm. The establishment of the bank will provide technical support for the protection, research, and utilization of wild biological germplasm in China.
Yunnan has abundant wildlife resources. There are 15,000 types of plants growing there, accounting for 50% of the total in China; 1,704 kinds of vertebrates, accounting for 55% of the total; and more than 100,500 types of insects, accounting for 67% of the total in China. The biological bank will mainly be used to collect and store the germplasm resource in Yunnan Province, its neighboring regions, and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau region. Most of the germplasm will be related with plants, some with animals and microorganisms.
When completed, the resource bank will consist of a seed storage, a gene bank, a DNA bank, a seed storage for microorganisms, a gene bank for animals, an information center and a plant gene resource center. The resource bank will be used to store some 190,000 sets of germplasm resources collected from 19,000 types of biological resources. In the first five years after its operation, the biological bank aims to store 66,500 sets of germplasm resources collected from 6,450 types of biological resources. In 10 to 15 years, the bank aims to build itself as a first-class germplasm resource bank in Asia, and one of the most important resource banks in the world. By January 5, 2007, the bank had stored 3,803 sets of seeds collected from wild plants.
The Southwest Wild Biological Germplasm Resource Bank is one of the key biological science projects in China. It is also a key innovative project that the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has set up in the southwest region. The establishing of the project, jointly by CASS and Yunnan Province, will help promote the construction of innovative projects by CASS. It will also effectively boost the co-operation between CASS and Yunnan local scientific institutions in the science field. The bank will play an important role in the protection and sustainable usage of biological resources in Yunnan, and in China as a whole. It will also help disseminate science knowledge in Yunnan Province, said Chen Zhu, CASS deputy president.