ECPGR Forages Working Group

On 1 February 2023, Susanne Barth (Ireland) was appointed as Chair of the ECPGR Forages Working Group.

November 2022
The ImprovLoliumCol Activity was completed with the publication of the Activity report.
This Activity followed up on the work of the FACCE-JPI ERA-NET+ project GrassLandscape, in which 427 accessions from the natural diversity of perennial ryegrass and nine accessions from related taxa were genotyped, phenotyped and documented for the environment of their collection sites. The ImprovLoliumCol activity promoted the inclusion of as many as possible of the accessions used in GrassLandscape into EURISCO and to be flagged as AEGIS and was concluded with 435 accessions registered in EURISCO and 344 expected to be flagged as part of AEGIS. Phenotypic data recorded in the frame of GrassLandscape were made easily available as C&E data via an ECPGR European Forage Portal connected to the EURISCO database. Using new knowledge on the spatial and environmental distribution of the natural diversity of perennial ryegrass provided by GrassLandscape, two levels of core collection were set up, a small one and a large one, including 159 and 211 accessions, respectively. These two levels of core collections were flagged on the forage crop portal.

September 2020
Owing to the covid pandemic, most of the work that was planned to be done in 2020 was delayed. To enable the completion of the tasks, the Activity was extended until the end of April 2022.

May 2020
New homepages for the Minor Forage Grasses and Phleum databases
These two databases, originally maintained by NordGen, are no longer being updated. Current data on European accessions of these species can be found in EURISCO. However, in order to maintain access to the historical data, two new homepages are provided on the ECPGR website: Minor Forage Grasses andPhleum. 

September 2019
The mid-term meeting and data training workshop of the ImprovLoliumCol Activity was held on 17 September 2019 at IPK Gatersleben, Germany [more info]

March 2019
The report of the preliminary workshop of the ImprovLoliumCol Activity is available online [here]

December 2018
The preliminary workshop of the ImprovLoliumCol Activity was held 6-7 December 2018 in Paris, France [more info]

June 2018
AEGIS progress and improved access to data on European Forage PGR (ForageDataAccess): the Final Activity Report is available online [here]

May 2018
The project on  “Facilitating use on the European perennial ryegrass collection: improving access to genetic resources and C&E data (ImprovLoliumCol)” submitted by the Forages Working Group and the Documentation and Information Working Group for funding under the Sixth Call  of the ECPGR Activity Grant Scheme, was selected by the Executive Committee. [more info]

April 2017
Update on Grasslandscape
Some members of the Forages Working Group are involved in the project GrassLandscape - Bridging landscape genomics and quantitative genetics for a regional adaptation of European grasslands to climate change (FACCE-JPI ERA-NET Plus action ‘Climate Smart Agriculture: Adaptation of agricultural systems in Europe’). The project is coordinated by J.P. Sampoux, French member of the Forages WG. The consortium includes INRA and EPHE in France, IPK in Germany, IBERS in the UK and ILVO in Belgium. The main objective of the project is to detect genomic markers of climatic adaptation in the natural diversity of perennial ryegrass and to use this information to adapt this species to the anthropogenic climate change foreseen to happen in next decades. In 2015, 500 accessions from the natural diversity of perennial ryegrass were sampled from European genebanks and 50 populations were newly collected across Europe. In 2016, all these materials were genotyped based on high-throughput sequencing technology which released more than 300 000 SNPs usable for genetic analyses. Populations were also assessed in field trials (2015 to 2017) and on high-throughput phenotyping platform (2015). Results of the project will provide new C&E data to feed the corresponding perennial ryegrass accessions in the EURISCO database and accessions used will be flagged in the European Forage Collection (EFC). Ultimately, genetic pools adapted to future regional climates of Europe are expected to be released and referenced in European collections.

March 2017
Joint workshop of the ForageDataAccess and Barley C&E Data Activities, 14-16 March 2017, Malmö, Sweden [more info]

May 2016
The project on "AEGIS progress and improved access to data on European Forage PGR (ForageDataAccess)" (236,6 KB), submitted by the Forages Working Group for funding under the ECPGR Activity Grant Scheme, was selected by the Executive Committee.

February 2016

• ECPGR WG for Forages towards 2020s (Forages 2020): the final Activity Report is now available online [here]
• A new workplan was developed for Phase IX (see below, Working Group operative documents)

November 2015
The Forages2020 workshop took place 9-11 November 2015 in Alnarp, Sweden [more info]

December 2014
The project on “ECPGR WG for Forages towards 2020s (Forages 2020)”, submitted by the Working Groups on Forages, Wild Species Conservation in genetic reserves and Documentation and Information for funding under the ECPGR Activity Grant Scheme, was selected by the Executive Committee.

2014
Some members of the Forages Working Group are involved in the project Grasslandscape - Bridging landscape genomics and quantitative genetics for a regional adaptation of European grasslands to climate change (ERA-NET Plus action “Climate Smart Agriculture: Adaptation of agricultural systems in Europe”)

2013
A second workshop on the “Establishment of the European Forages Collection” took place at NordGen, Alnarp, Sweden, 9-11 April 2013 as part of the AEGIS Grant Scheme. Final report of the workshop (5,7 MB)

Previous years [link to ECPGR archive]