Collecting crop genetic resources in Italian towns of Albanian origin across the Molise, Calabria and Sicily regions

A project on collecting and safeguarding crop genetic resources in Italian linguistic islands by the Institute of Plant Genetics (IGV) of the National Research Council (CNR) of Bari (Italy) and the Institute of Crop Science of Kassel University (Germany) started in 1996 with a first mission in Italian towns (Basilicata region) of Albanian origin. In 2008 three other regions (Calabria, Molise and Sicily) were visited with the same aim. Ninety-six accessions belonging to 38 taxa were collected from 23 collecting sites. The Albanian linguistic islands still preserve valuable crop genetic resources that are severely threatened by genetic erosion. To halt this phenomenon a good example comes from Molise where the municipal government and scientific sector are starting to co-operate in the preservation of genetic diversity.