Methodology and results

Innovative methods and techniques
 

This stage, dedicated to innovative techniques of micro-propagation and cryo-conservation, coordinated by Partner 4 - General Direction of Nature (DGMN) of Board for Industry and the Environment of the Murcia region - allowed the partners involved to train personnel and put into practice the protocols for some species that have difficult conservation and propagation. The goals were built around two main themes: training and research.

With regard to the first theme, or subject, a training seminar was organized during the first meeting of the project's Piloting Committee, which took place in Murcia in September, 2006. During the seminar, theoretical and fundamental concepts were brought forth on new techniques, outlining the opportunities that these techniques offer conservational biology in general and germ-plasma banks in particular.

Following this, and for the length of the project, the partners interested in applying these techniques underwent a training period at the University of Alicante, where professor José Luis Casas and his assistants perfected several work protocols. The team from the Biodiversity Conservation Centre (CCB) of Sardinia worked on Ribes sardoum, a species of great conservational interest due to its Sardinian endemism and the fact that there are demographic problems and problems regarding sexual reproduction that are so important that it is catalogued in the Top 50 of the most threatened species of the Mediterranean.

Another species that was studied is Ulmus glabra, tested by the team at the Forestry Study and Experimentation Centre (CIEF) of the Environmental Board of Valencia, with the aim of obtaining efficient protocol for in vitro multiplication. Lastly, the team from Murcia worked with several species (Tamarix boveana, Tetraclinis articulata, Cistus heterophyllus subsp. carthaginensis and Astragalus nitidiflorus) for the development of specific micro-propagation and cryo-conservation protocols.