Identified gaps for Cicer genepool

(see downloads)

We found data for 22 wild species and no infraspecific taxa. The different taxa are classified as follows, according to their closeness to the cropped species C. arietinum using Singh and Jauhar (2005) as follows:

The analysis dataset (download) contained 325 observations, with 19 (6%) being herbarium specimens and 306 (94%) being genebank accessions. The average number of total samples per taxon was 15 (standard deviation of 20), which indicates that the information is not abundant and concentrated in particular taxa (i.e. C. reticulatum, C. pinnatifidum, C. bijugum, C. microphyllum and C. judaicum).

The gap analysis of the Cicer genepool found that there are 15 taxa that are either underrepresented or not represented in genebank holdings out of the 22 taxa under analysis, whilst two taxa (i.e. C. anatolicum, C. microphyllum) are relatively well represented and the other 4 taxa were flagged as very well conserved taxa (C. bijugum, C. echinospermum, C. judaicum, C. pinnatifidum, C. reticulatum); 14 of the high priority taxa have less than 10 observations in total, which indicates the urgent need of a collecting mission for them (or the need of more genebank and herbarium data readily available). The rest of these taxa were mapped and their potential collecting zones are shown in the figures below:

Potential sampling zones

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Cicer high priority taxa were found to be distributed along the central region of Asia and the Greek peninsula. Zones in the figures above are those in which the species is likely to exist and no genebank accessions have been collected.

Potential sampling richness

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The greatest sampling-richness was found within the Corinthos gulf (Greece) and Afghanistan.

Brief description of data used in the analysis

The centre of diversity of the Cicer genepool is the Fertile Crescent, thus the records of the different species are from this area and also Asia. The table below shows the number of records (herbarium, germplasm, total) used per species for the Cicer genepool gap analysis.

Species’ taxonomy was reviewed using Maxted and Kell (2009) as a first stage and the GRIN taxonomical review in second place. After cross-checking and correcting both synonyms and orthography of the species’ names, a thorough georeferencing process is carried out to obtain a spatially explicit database containing as many records as possible for each species. After this, records outside continental boundaries were deleted and a final dataset was produced for analyses (download dataset).

These are the 8 different collections from which data were readily available:

1. EUNIS
2. EURISCO, The European Genetic Resources Search Catalogue
3. Israel Nature and Parks Authority
4. Lund Botanical Museum (LD)
5. Missouri Botanical Garden
6. Real Jardin Botanico (Madrid), Vascular Plant Herbarium (MA)
7. The System-wide Information Network for Genetic Resources (SINGER)
8. United States National Plant Germplasm System Collection

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