The INRAE Biological Resource Center ‘BrACySol’: a French centre of valuable genetic resources to address major issues faced by potato and oilseed rape crops

The INRAE Biological Resource Center (BRC) ‘BrACySol’ preserves collections of Solanum and Brassica genetic resources that represent a great genetic diversity. These resources are of great value in research programs that tackle agronomic issues faced by potato (1) and Brassica crops (2). (1) Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.), which is the fourth most important food crop in the world, is attacked by a large number of pathogens (including late blight disease, that is controlled by a massive use of fungicides). Resistant cultivars have also been used, but most of the resistant genes are overcome. Therefore, genetic resources are explored for identifying novel sources of durable resistance. In the framework of the PoTStaR project, funded by the French National Ecophyto plan, a panel of 80 breeding lines, maintained at the BRC BrACySol, showed a high level of stable resistance to late blight. These breeding lines are currently being used by breeders in their programs to create new resistant potato cultivars. (2) Turnips (Brassica rapa) and cabbages (B. oleracea) represent an important part of vegetable crops in the world. They also are the progenitor species of oilseed rape (B. napus). The BRC BrACySol maintains core collections of both progenitor species. In the framework of ProBiodiv project, funded by Promosol, the diversity present in these core collections was exploited to create prebreeding oilseed rape populations that were provided to breeders for the identification of novel traits of interest.