'Plant Breeding: Sustaining the Future' Abstracts of the XVIth EUCARPIA Congress, Edinburgh, Scotland, 10-14 September 2001 PLANT GENETIC RESOURCES NETWORK IN LATVIA I. RASHAL Institute of Biology, University of Latvia, Salaspils, LV-2169, Latvia

The Plant Genetic Laboratory of the Institute of Biology functions as a centre of Latvian PGR activities. Since 1997 here the Latvian Gene Bank of Cultivated Plants operated. The Gene Bank was created in framework of the Nordic-Baltic project in PGR and has all equipment needed for long-term seed conservation. The mandate of the Latvian Gene Bank of Cultivated Plants is conserving seed samples of accessions of cultivated plants of the Latvian origin, excepted ornamentals, and also seed samples of wild relatives of cultivated plants collected in Latvia. At the moment all available seed accessions of the Latvian origin are maintained here. Multiplication of seeds, and also all evaluations and observations are done by experts from different plant breeding institutions.