Conservation and sanitation of tropical genetic resources: a challenge for food security and germplasms exchange

The French Biological Resource Centers (BRCs) have the challenge of conserving their biological materials at the attention of research institutions as well as to develop tools for conservation and breeding. Another issue is to provide plant material to farmers for diversification and production. The BRC for Tropical Plants (BRC TP) manages five collections of plants of great importance for the tropical regions, banana, mango, pineapple, sugarcane and yam. Two of these collections, pineapple and yam, are facing important sanitary problems mainly due to viral diseases. Pineapple is affected by the wilt disease, which decimates pineapple plantations in Guadeloupe and Martinique following the cessation of insecticide use. About 25 viral species are identified on yam, and some of them are at the origin of the disappearance of some yam species, such as the Dioscorea trifida species. The identification of the virome of these virus-susceptible plants is an essential step. Sanitation techniques have been developed in pineapple and yam germplasms in order to generate healthy plants, free of all viral diseases. They are based on in vitro culture techniques, such as thermotherapy and meristem culture, and reliable PCR-based molecular detection tools.