TOWARDS THE ASSESSMENT OF THE COST OF GENEBANKS MANAGEMENT - CONSERVATION, REGENERATION AND CHARACTERIZATION

This study presents an approach for the estimate of the conservation, regeneration and characterization costs of plant genetic resources, fo r a small number of sexually-regenerated and vegetatively-propagated s pecies. Conservation activities include base, safety and active collec tions maintenance. The annual conservation cost is low for sexually-re generated species. It varies depending on the seed size and the number of samples stored in the active collection for each accession. The re generation cost per cycle is much higher, depending mainly on the biol ogical characteristics of the material. The annual conservation cost o f vegetatively-propagated species is much higher than for sexually-reg enerated species, due to their conservation in orchards. In contrast w ith sexually-regenerated species, the annual conservation cost of thes e vegetatively-propagated species is close to their annual regeneratio n cost. Characterization costs of an accession for morphological and m olecular markers are similar. This study, following a micro-economic a pproach, needs further assessments to enlarge the range of species and to cover all the genebanks activities. Nevertheless, it contributes t o bring practical data in a field where they are very few in spite of an important need.