ECPGR Brassica Working Group

July 2024
A paper reporting on the 'Capturing Brassica Wild Relatives Diversity in South-Eastern Europe (EUBRASWILD)' collecting missions was published in July 2024 in Genetic Resources. The paper describes missions by national teams in Albania, Croatia and Italy (Ponza and Sicily), including highlights of newly discovered locations.

Maggioni, L., Ban, S. G., Jani, S., Jasprica, N., Treccarichi, S., Išić, N. and Branca, F. (2024) “Collecting Mediterranean wild species of the Brassica oleracea group (Brassica sect. Brassica)”, Genetic Resources, 5(10), pp. 1–16. doi: 10.46265/genresj.PCWY8016.

February 2024
​​​​​​The 'Capturing Brassica Wild Relatives Diversity in South-Eastern Europe (EUBRASWILD)' activity held its final meeting in Catania on 20 February 2024, hosted by the University of Catania, Italy. Partners from Albania, Croatia, Italy, Serbia and Slovenia presented the results of their exploration, collection and characterization of new accessions of Brassica wild relatives. New accessions have been included in EURISCO and will require multiplication before possible inclusion into the European Collection. Characterization was often affected by extreme weather conditions, which caused floods in Slovenia and severe drought in Serbia. [More info]

On 20 and 21 February, the meeting was extended online to the entire Working Group (WG) on Brassica. Brassica-specific genebank quality standards were discussed and will be finalized for agreement by the WG. The opportunity and procedure to include characterization and evaluation data into EURISCO was clarified and promoted. The main constraint to the inclusion of new accessions in the AEGIS European Collection is seed multiplication. The Brassica global strategy published by the Crop Trust was presented by C. Allender, highlighting several information gaps and the recommendation to create occasions to exchange information on Brassica at the global level.
The meeting encouraged Smiljana Goreta Ban to submit an Expression of Interest to become the new Chair of the Working Group. Outgoing Chair Ferdinando Branca was praised and thanked for more than 15 years of dedicated service to the WG.

Presentations given at the WG meeting: 

• Brassica in the AEGIS collection (877,9 KB) (Ferdinando Branca)
• Information on ECPGR Phase XI (4,6 MB) (Lorenzo Maggioni)
• Information on BRESOV results relevant for the Brassica WG (12,6 MB)(Ferdinando Branca)
• The Brassica Global Strategy (Charlotte Allender) - pending

Agenda (156,2 KB)  |  List of participants (619,5 KB)

April 2022
The interim Activity report for the 'Capturing Brassica Wild Relatives Diversity in South-Eastern Europe (EUBRASWILD)' project is available [here (1,0 MB)]

March 2021
The Second meeting of the ECPGR Activity EUBRASWILD, Capturing Brassica Wild Relatives Diversity in the South Eastern Europe will be held virtually on 3 March 2021 - Meeting programme (669,3 KB) [more info]

November 2020
The First meeting of the ECPGR Activity EUBRASWILD, Capturing Brassica Wild Relatives Diversity in the South Eastern Europe was held virtually on 30 November 2020 - Meeting programme (678,6 KB) [more info]

March 2020
The project on "Capturing Brassica Wild Relatives Diversity in South Eastern Europe  (EUBRASWILD)", submitted by the Brassica Working Group for funding under the Third Call of the ECPGR Activity Grant Scheme for Phase X, was selected by the Executive Committee [more info] 

March 2019
The BRESOV project recently published a Position Paper introducing the project, its aim and objectives:
What do bean, broccoli and tomatoes have in common? (2,3 MB)

July 2018
European project BRESOV (“Breeding for Resilient, Efficient and Sustainable Organic Vegetable Production“)
The recently started European project BRESOV has set out to improve the competitiveness of three important vegetable crops (broccoli, snap bean and tomato) in an organic and sustainable environment. With a strong participation of stakeholders from the breeding and farming sector, the project aims to create a pipeline for crop improvement that will accelerate the production of high-quality organic seeds for breeders and farmers around the world. [more]
•    Factsheet (229,9 KB)
•    Press Release (693,3 KB)

November 2016
COllection, CHaracterization and EVAluation of wild and cultivated BRASsicas (COCHEVA BRAS): the final Activity Report is now available online [here]

December 2014
The project on “COllection, CHaracterization and EVAluation of wild and cutivated BRASsicas (COCHEVA BRAS)”, submitted by the Brassica Working Group for funding under the ECPGR Activity Grant Scheme, was selected by the Executive Committee. [more info] 

May 2014
Conclusion of the ECPGR-funded project “Bio-morphological and genetic characterization of the Brassica Working Group collection”: Final report submitted by DISPA, University of Catania (431,1 KB)

2013

November 2013
Finalisation of the “Glucosinolate analysis of a collection of European accessions of wild Brassica and Brassica rapa”, carried out at CSIC, Cordoba, Spain as part of the ECPGR-funded project “Bio-morphological and genetic characterization of the Brassica Working Group collection” [link to ECPGR archive]

June 2013
The EUCARPIA Genetic Resources section meeting "Pre-breeding - fishing in the gene pool" was held 11-13 June 2013 at NordGen, Alnarp, Sweden. Details are available from the meeting website. Many ECPGR members attended the meeting and several presentations referred to ECPGR. Two posters related to Brassica were presented [see here]

February 2013
Conclusion of the ECPGR-funded project “Identification of unknown Brassica rapa L.  accessions from European genebanks, carried out at VIR, St Petersburg, Russian Federation [link to ECPGR archive]

Previous years [link to ECPGR archive]