جمع آوری، شناسایی، ارزیابی مقدماتی و حفاظت بذور گیاهان مرتعی به منظور تقویت بانک ژن (فاز سوم)

Collection, identification and preservation of rangeland plant seeds is one of the mostimportant research priorities in gene bank development. In this research, major rangelandplant seeds were collected, identified in 28 province of Iran over 5 year (2010-2016). In thefirst step, the list of important plant species were prepared by using flora books and literaturecited. So, each province was divided into different ecological regions for better managementof accessions collection. During the investigation, the seed name and its identifications andsome ecological factors of the originated area were recorded. Afterwards, filed surveys wereaccomplished and all of collected seeds were identified, cleaned, packed and transferred tothe seed technology laboratory in natural resource gene bank in Research Institute of Forestsand Rangelands, Tehran, Iran. The accessions were analyzed for seed purity, humidityamount, vitality percentage and 1000 kernel weight. In this project, in total 7500 accessionswere collected. About half of them, equal to 3720 accessions had gene bank standards andwere preserved in medium and long-term storage. These accessions were belongs to 322species, 82 genera and 13 families. The 13% of accessions were identified in genera levels.The families of Fabaceae, Poaceae and Chenopodiaceae with 111, 92 and 43 accessions wereranked as the first to third order, respectively. The genera, Bromus spp. with 310 accessionshad higher seed samples followed by Atriplex, Melica, Ferula, Stipa, Trifolium, Salsola,Agropyron, Dactylis, Sanguisorba, Medicago, Poa and Astragalus with 100 to 180accessions in the second order. Some species as Melica persica, Dactylis glomerata,Sanguisorba minor, Poa bulbosa, Bromus tomentellus with average values of 90, 134, 133,141 and 168 accessions had higher frequency, respectively. The highest accessions numberwith 646 samples were collected from Yazd province. The province of Zanjan, Markazi,West Azerbijan, Ardebil and Khozestan with 202 to 295 ranked as second order. Theprovince of Kohgiluyeh Boyer Ahmad, Chaharmahal e Bkhtyary, Isfahan,, South Khorasan,North Khorasan, Hamedan, Tehran, Kerman and Guilan with 101 to 169 accessions rankedas the third order. Results of seed technology showed, that 48% of accessions had over than80% germination and in contrast 30% of accessions had lower than 50% germination. It wassuggested that the latter groups had seed dormancy. Distributions of accessions were plottedon Iran map based on the geographical profile. The majority of species were wild and overthan 73% were occurred in mountain ranges, in areas having altitude 1500 to 3000mKeywords: Seed collection, Rangeland plants, genetic resources, Natural resources gene bank