Collecting local landraces of maize in south eastern Europe during 2009 and 2010

Within the framework of South East European Development Network on Plant Genetic Resources program, collecting missions in twelve countries were conducted under the regional project "Collecting local landraces of maize and cereals (wheat, barley, rye, oat, millet and buckwheat) in South Eastern Europe (2009-2010)". The main goal of this project was preservation of local landraces of maize and cereals in the participating countries with the aim to make them available for breeding, research and other purposes at national, regional and international level. The project participants were the national teams from Macedonia (as project coordinator), Federation Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Romania, Republic of Serbia, Kosovo, Croatia, Albania, Serbia, Slovenia, Moldova and Bulgaria. Each national team carried out the collecting missions in its own country. During 2009 and 2010, over 589 localities were inventoried in the predicted regions. The result of the project was a total number of 867 maize and cereals accessions collected. Maize prevailed with the total number of 637 collected accessions (73.47%), followed by 47 wheat accessions (5.42%), then barley 43 (5.07%), rye 40 (4.61%), oat 52 (5.99%), millet 8 (0.92%), buckwheat 9 (1.02%) and other species (Sorghum sp., Triticum monococcum, Triticum spelta, Triticum turanicum, einkorn) 31 accessions (3.58%). Regarding the status of the samples, accessions are mainly landraces, which are still grown by some farmers and used as a source of high quality animal and human food.