VIR collection of the global diversity of vegetable and cucurbit crops and the main directions of its use

Relevance of cultivated plant preservation in gene banks and broadening variability of their traits keeps increasing due to the substantial shrinking of the genetic base for the development of modern intensive varieties. The VIR Collection contains over 53,000 vegetable and cucurbit specimens from 98 countries, including representatives of 32 families, 148 genera, and 610 species. VIR vegetable and cucurbit collections have leading positions in the global gene bank system. The uniqueness of the collections reaches 80%. The main areas of collection development include the collection of wild species and local forms with a high degree of resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses and valuable biochemical composition. The identification of genetic sources and donors of valuable traits in vegetable and cucurbit crops, subsequently proposed for use in breeding programs, is based on a study of the global collection of vegetable and cucurbit crops at 11 VIR branches located in various ecological and geographical zones of the Russian Federation and at the main institute in St. Petersburg. These comprehensive botanical-agrobiological, ecological-geographical, morphological, biochemical, immunological, and genetic studies are conducted with particular attention paid to the characteristics of accessions for early maturity, shelf life during long-term storage, cold, drought, and heat resistance, developmental characteristics, flowering biology, disease and pest resistance, and chemical composition. This brief overview of the global diversity of VIR collections of vegetable and cucurbit genetic resources presents an analysis of the main areas of their use in modern breeding. This article reports information on how the accessions of vegetable and cucurbit crops from the VIR collection were used on request over the past five years, during 2021-2025.