Here you will find information on the UK’s genebank of landrace and wild potatoes, the Commonwealth Potato Collection. The collection is one of a network of international potato genebanks (http://www.potgenebank.org), and is held in trust for humanity by SCRI with the support of the Scottish Government.
The collection comprises around 1500 accessions of about 80 wild and cultivated potato species. Each accession traces back to a handful of berries or tubers from potato plants in South or Central America, gathered from the wild or obtained from a grower at a market.
Such genetic resources are priceless, comprising the basic resource for the improvement and adaptation of the world’s fourth most important food crop, the potato. The genetic material in the collection has made a major contribution to the potato crop worldwide, and continues to do so today. Our task is to maintain this material, to make it available to bona fide researchers, breeders and educators under terms consistent with the international treaties that govern the use of such germplasm. To meet that task we aim to maintain a high health status of the material to permit it to remain accessible, and intend to develop this site as resource for the research and breeding community.
We can be contacted by email on cpc@scri.ac.uk
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