Conservation and Management of Genetic Resources of Sorghum, Pearl millet, Chickpea, Pigeonpea, Groundnut and other Small millets in the ICRISAT Genebank

ICRISAT operates as a system of genebanks with a main genebank located in Patancheru, \n(India) and other 3 genebanks located in Niamey (Niger), Nairobi (Kenya) and Bulawayo \n(Zimbabwe). Each of these genebanks perform all the regular operations and conserve \nand distribute accessions to users according to their location. In its active collection the \nICRISAT genebank at Patancheru holds more than 119,000 accessions of sorghum, \ngroundnut, chickpea, pigeonpea, pearl millet and six other small millets (finger millet, \nfoxtail millet, barnyard millet, kodo millet, little millet and proso millet). In total the \ngenebank conserves accession of 11 different crops that represent 70 – 80% of the \navailable diversity (Upadhyaya et al. 2008). Additionally, accessions of groundnut and \npearl millet are also stored at Niamey, accession of sorghum and pearl millet at \nBulawayo, and accessions of sorghum, pigeon pea and chickpea at the Nairobi genebank \n(Koo et al. 2004). In this evaluation we have evaluated only the Patancheru genebank and \nthe main genetic materials conserved in its facilities. 11 The only previous cost evaluation \nof the ICRISAT genebank corresponds to the work of Koo et al. (2004) that also \nconcentrated on the accessions kept at Patancheru