ECPGR Maize Working Group

June 2024
A new study was published in Biology by the EVA Maize network, describing the genetic and phenotypic diversity of the EVA collection of 626 maize landraces preserved in nine European genebanks. Read more here.

May 2024
The MALANIRS Activity, submitted by the Maize Working Group for funding under the First Call of the Phase XI ECPGR Activity Grant Scheme, was selected by the Executive Committee and approved in May 2024. 

January 2021
The Report of a Working Group on Maize, First Meeting, Belgrade, Serbia (2-3 December 2019) is published (available here). 

May 2020
European Evaluation Networks (EVA) – Maize Network. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the meeting of the EVA Maize Project, originally planned for 27-28 May 2020 in Paris, France, was replaced by a virtual meeting on 27 May 2020.  [more info]

December 2019
New EVA Maize component
An extension of the project “Implementation of the ECPGR EVA Network on wheat/barley and vegetable crops (carrot, lettuce and pepper)” was granted by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture with an additional contribution of ca. € 300 000 until November 2022. This extension will enable the newly formed Working Group on Maize to add value to European maize genetic resources within an appropriate framework of public/private partnerships, with adoption of common standards, use of EURISCO and strengthening of the AEGIS collection. In practice, during the project duration a total of 200-500 European genebank accessions of maize will be genotyped and evaluated for biotic and abiotic stresses in multilocation experiments. [more info]

December 2019
The first meeting of the Working Group took place 2-3 December 2019 in Belgrade, Serbia. more info

February 2019
Violeta Andjelkovic, Head of Genebank, Maize Research Institute in Zemun Polje, Serbia, was nominated as Chair of the Working Group.

January 2019
Several countries have already nominated WG members (list available here). The WG will be able to start operating as soon as the Chair will have been nominated (selection process is ongoing).