Plant genetic diversity as it relates to agriculture is central to human food security and its conservation is considered a global obligation. The Australian Pastures Genebank (APG) is the custodian of one of the world’s most diverse and significant pasture and forage collections. The APG was established in 2014 from the consolidation of eleven pasture seed collections in Australia and represents a long-term strategy for the conservation of pasture genetic resources of both existing and potential value to Australian agriculture. The APG holds 79,545 accessions from 2619 species, collected from 178 countries. The collection is recognised as globally unique, with almost 90% of the accessions collected from the wild by Australian scientists over the last 70 years.
The management of a living seed collection is critical to the success of the long-term conservation strategy. The seed collection is stored at -20º C and 5% relative humidity with high level risk mitigation including national and international safety backup seed storage. The health of each accession is routinely monitored, and seed is regenerated when the inventory of living seeds falls to a critical level. GRIN-Global database software (USDA) is employed for managing data associated with each accession; seed inventories, passport data from the collection origin, measured plant traits (observation data), and customer orders. The GRIN-Global database has an on-line store, https://apg.pir.sa.gov.au/gringlobal/, where users can retrieve database information and request seed. The APG database is also linked with genesy-pgr.org, the online platform for housing information from world-wide plant genetic resources, linking Australia’s plant genetic resources to the world.