Development of approaches to documenting information on plant genetic resource accessions as a basis for their guaranteed conservation and effective use
Digital information on nucleotide sequences of genetic resource samples is internationally recognized as an important economic factor. Effective use of genetic information and the physical carriers of this information, biological materials, is possible with complete data for the sample identification, description, and evaluation. This complex information is both the result of the work of many generations of scientists and a valuable resource, enabling the most effective planning and implementation of modern high-tech research. The development of standard approaches to documenting plant genetic resources at various stages of scientific and methodological development has always been a priority in the work of the World collection of genetic resources of cultivated plants and their wild relatives (VIR Collection) – the oldest and one of the largest in the world in terms of the botanical, genetic, geographic, and ecological diversity. At the current stage of combining digital and genetic technologies, the topic of documenting information on plant genetic resource collection samples has been developed within the framework of the program of the National Center for Plant Genetic Resources, established on the basis of VIR by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation in 2022. The National Center's program includes a separate chapter, "Digitalization," the implementation of which meets the federal legislative requirement regarding plant genetic resources to maintain national catalogs of particularly valuable genetic resource samples, catalogs of biological (bioresource) collections, and a register of national collections of particularly valuable genetic resource samples and biological (bioresource) collections through the state information system in the field of genetic information, the "National Database of Genetic Information" (GIS NBGI). The purpose of this study is to analyze the experience of documenting comprehensive information on plant genetic resource accessions in the context of current challenges in the creation, formation, preservation, development, study, and use of this type of collections.