Survey for The Conservation of Agrobiodiversity in Three Italian Linguistic (Occitan, Croatian and Franco-Provençal) Islands.

This study is a continuation of a research started in 1996 to study and safeguard the agrobiodiversity in Italian linguistic islands by the Institute of Plant Genetics of the C.N.R. of Bari (Italy) and the Institute of Crop Science of Kassel University (Germany). In 2011 additional three collecting missions were carried out in the Franco-Provençal, Croatian, and Occitan linguistic areas. In all 146 accessions were collected belonging mainly to landraces of cereals, pulses and vegetables. Even if these linguistic areas still conserve worthy crop genetic resources (e.g. rye and wheat in Occitan districts, common beans in Franco-Provençal villages of Apulia region), a strong genetic erosion of the most typical crops was recorded. Safeguarding these crops both ex situ and in situ is thus a matter of urgency.