The Cereal Breeding Department of MTA ATK maintains two collections of genetic resources: breeder’s collection and a set of cultivated and wild relative species of wheat. The main tasks of our genebank are preservation, regeneration and evaluation of genetic resources. These collections serve as a basis of cereal breeding and research projects of MTA ATK. The long-term maintenance started in 1994, from this time the collection has been growing rapidly.

The breeder’s collection consists of 14 076 accessions of breeding stocks, lines and varieties. Majority of the accessions are wheat (80%) genotypes, but other cultivated cereals (barley, durum wheat, triticale, etc.) are also represented. Most of the accessions of breeder’s collection are unique: the diversity generated by Martonvásár cereal breeding program is preserved here and these accessions are maintained exclusively by our genebank. The collection is actively used: 4863 accessions were utilized in the last 25 years in our breeding or research programmes and more than 400 accessions were supplied to external users. The accessions are characterized continuously: agronomic parameters are assessed before registration and under regeneration, most accessions are characterized for quality data and 25% of the accessions are evaluated with molecular markers (e.g. presence/absence of resistance genes).

The related species collection is the set of wild and cultivated relatives of wheat. This collection consists of 1 076 accessions, including major species of Triticum, Aegilops and perennial species (Agropyron, Elymus, etc.). Many of these accessions possess excellent resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. Several pre-breeding programs were started at Martonvásár on the basis of genebank accessions to transfer the useful traits of wild relatives into hexaploid bread wheat. The largest species-collections consist of Triticum monococcum (257 accs.) and Aegilops biuncialis (100 accs.). The Aegilops collection has been expanded in the recent years by collecting new accessions via a South-eastern European expedition in 2013.

All accessions are conserved ex situ, and perennial accessions are maintained in situ, in the field.

Acknowledgement. This work is supported by EMVA (1773409399) project.