FCBA – Biotechnology/Breeding of plants

XYLOBIOTECH is one of the six technical platforms of the XYLOFOREST EquipEx ”Investissements d’Avenir” French program. It is designed to maintain and propagate genetic resources and to better characterize them. XYLOBIOTECH allows studying the genetic evolution of different tree species in order to develop new tools selection and propagation of forest varieties adapted to the needs of foresters to produce sustainably wood matching the needs of the various forest products sectors. To achieved that, the different teams grow, clean, multiply, retain and make available to plants, meeting the needs of research, the conservation of genetic resources and nurseries. The EquipEx brought equipment and improvements to devices already in place. Two teams work in this platform, FCBA Biotechnology Laboratory and AGPF team from INRA Orléans.

The main missions of Xylobiotech platform are :

• To provide a service of Cryopreservation of forest trees and ornamental
• To provide transgenesis for the functional genomics
• To study physiological and molecular phenomena related to the rejuvenilisation and culture in vitro
• To characterize produced plants in vitro (phenotyping)

Treebreedex database aims to collect meta-data of genetic resources linked to forest tree breeding across Europe. Genetic resources include genetic material (population, progeny, clone, variety, etc) and field experimental trials (provenance, progeny, clone, variety, archive, clonal bank, seed orchard, etc). As such, it allows searching specific material available through dedicated open or more focused queries and identifying contact institutes for further exchanges (material, data).

Up to date (March 14, 2016), it hosts over 297000 genetic units and 7700 genetic field trials for 117 species (including hybrids) over 56 partners, members or not of the consortium.