Brassica germplasm collection

Collection of seed samples from local varieties of the main brassica crops in Galicia, Brassica oleracea, B. rapa and B. napus, started in 1985. . Collected cultivars had horticultural and forage uses.
Brassica oleracea includes kales (B. oleracea var. acephala), cabbages (B. oleracea var. capitata) and Tronchuda cabbages (B. oleracea var. costata), crops that receive the common name of cabbages. B. rapa includes turnips, turnip greens and turnip tops and, finally, B. napus accessions correspond to the form known as nabicol or leaf rape.
Prospecting for new local varieties of brassicas was temporarily interrupted for one decade (from the late 80s until the late 90s). More recently, the Galician brassica collection was completed, and accessions from other Spanish provinces (Asturias, Castilla la Mancha and the Canary Islands) and from other countries were included in the brassica collection of MBG.
This collection works as an active collection since its creation in the 80s. It constitutes an important collection, singular for the uniqueness of the crops that are conserved, most germplasm being adapted to the European Atlantic conditions with high intra and intervarietal variability.
The maintenance and study of this collection is funded by R&D projects of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.
The following table summarizes the contents of the brassica germplasm bank:

Species Subspecies Crop Origin TOTAL
Galicia Asturias Canary Islands Castilla y León Catalonia Portugal Poland Others
Brassica napus pabularia nabicol 62 62
oleifera colza 1 1
unclassified 2 2
Total species 64 1 65
Brassica oleracea acephala kale 209 42 1 2 254
capitata cabbage 49 49
costata Tronchuda cabbage 3 1 4
unclassified 14 19 3 33
Total species 275 42 19 1 2 1 3 343
Brassica rapa rapa turnips, turnip greens, turnip tops 224 12 2 238
TOTAL ENTRIES IN THE BANK BY ORIGIN AREA 563 54 19 1 2 1 1 5 646