12 November 2015

A large dataset of 669 645 accessions from the NASC was recently included into EURISCO, mostly from the genus Arabidopsis (669 539 accessions).  Other genera include Brassica, Capsella, Cardaminopsis, Crucihimalaya, Noccaea, Thellungiella and Thlaspi.

(note below from Sean May, NASC)
NASC in the UK started with a few hundred accessions in 1991 and now holds well over 800 000 stocks. As an openly accessible Plant Genetic Resource it sends out more than 100 000 tubes of seed per year; separated into thousands of natural accessions, dozens of well characterized mapping populations, a vast collection of mutants, and many other genetic tools. These resources have enabled Arabidopsis to flourish as a research model for the international plant and crop community [1]. In the past 50 years, over 54 000 Arabidopsis papers have been published and in turn cited by more than 15 000 non-Arabidopsis-focused papers [2].

[1] Meinke D, Scholl R. 2003. The Preservation of Plant Genetic Resources. Experiences with Arabidopsis. Plant Physiology 133(3):1046-1050.
[2] Provart N.J. et al. 2015. 50 years of Arabidopsis research: highlights and future directions. New Phytologist. doi:10.1111/nph.13687