**16. Landrace conservation**

Conservation of all gene pools is a high priority for sustaining food security and coping with current and future climate change effects. Not only must landraces be conserved, but so should local varieties that have been replaced by new and more productive ones. Older varieties, due to the emphasis on landraces and more exotic materials, must not be forgotten, and older varieties, as well as other breeding materials, need to be conserved as a source of genetic diversity. Despite the enormous efforts made by national and international programs to conserve landrace diversities, eventually the conservation of germplasm and characterization of key traits will provide specific information to breeders that will promote the use of genetic resources by the scientific community.

The discovery of abiotic stress at tolerant alleles in landraces of maize, rice and wheat clearly shows the importance of conserving and exploring landrace germplasm as a means to identify gnomonically beneficial alleles for enhancing adaptation and productivity in stress-prone environments [2].

#### **16.1. Specifically, several challenges need attention:**


**iii.** Diversity being well retained during collection through the use of molecular markers and visual observation and by using internationally accepted conservation and characterization standards in seed gene banks

**Conflict of interest**

**Author details**

Ogbomoso, Nigeria

**104**:127-139

2000. pp. 11-14

in Agriculture. 2002;**59**:589-593

Renzo Torricelli Nigel

**References**

Authors declare no conflict of interest.

Musibau A. Azeez\*, Amos O. Adubi and Felicia A. Durodola

Laboratory of Ecotoxicology, Genetics and Nanobiotechnology, Environmental Biology Unit, Department of Pure and Applied Biology, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology

Landraces and Crop Genetic Improvement http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.75944 17

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\*Address all correspondence to: maazeez@lautech.edu.ng


These activities, once established, will greatly improve the targeted use of genetic resources and will help scientists and breeders strategically extract and use allelic variation for important traits.
