INCREASE – Intelligent Collections of Food Legumes Genetic Resources for European Agrofood Systems

Objectives

INCREASE aims at improving the sustainable use of plant genetic resources by enhancing the status of the genetic resources of four important food legumes: chickpea, common bean, lentil, lupin. By developing efficient and effective conservation tools and methods that could be applied to all kind of genetic resources, INCREASE aims to promote agro-biodiversity and its use in Europe and beyond.

This will be achieved through:

  1. Improvement of management and sharing of food legume genetic resources data through optimised databases and easily accessible tools
  2. Massive production of a large amount of high-quality genotypic and phenotypic data
  3. Development of Intelligent Collections for the exploration of the genetic resources diversity and design of innovative conservation management approaches by undertaking a participatory citizen science experiment
  4. Development of new knowledge, such as gene discovery or genomic prediction, made easily available through a web-based searching and visualisation tool to identify appropriate sources of germplasm
  5. Development, test and dissemination of best practices for dynamic management of genetic resources across European and non-European institutions and initiatives
  6. Development of decentralised information technology approaches for data sharing and germplasm conservation