WorldVeg
World Vegetable Center
The World Vegetable Center conducts research, builds networks and carries out training and promotion activities to raise awareness of the role of vegetables for improved health and global poverty alleviation. The Center’s research and development work focuses on breeding improved vegetable lines, developing and promoting safe production practices, reducing postharvest losses and improving the nutritional value of vegetables. The World Vegetable Center maintains two genebanks in Taiwan and Tanzania, respectively, that maintain together more than 65,000 accessions of vegetable crops and their wild relatives. They distribute seed samples of genebank accessions and advanced breeding lines worldwide to researchers, breeders and practitioners.
Role in PRO-GRACE
The World Vegetable Center will mainly contribute to WP3 (Research Infrastructure technologies and scientific services) and be responsible for deliverable 3.5 'Demonstration of methods and services for ex situ and in situ phytosanitary surveillance and phytosanitation of contaminated unique genebank material'. These efforts comprise testing of phytosanitary procedures for germplasm exchange purposes and control of seed-borne pathogens to facilitate international seed movement. The Center will also participate in the works to deliverable D3.4 'Demonstration of bioinformatic methods and services for kinship/population structure/pedigree determination, gap analyses, GWAS and QTL analyses' and contribute sequences and omics tools to generate a pepper pangenome sequence. In addition, the World Vegetable Center will be part of the Dissemination and Exploitation Committee of the project to maximize the global impact of PRO-GRACE.
Main Contacts
Wuu-Yang (Willie) Chen
Associate Specialist - Seed Health and Quarantine Lab
Maarten van Zonneveld
Genebank Manager
