Melon resources are managed in France by a cooperative network of partners : conservators of public or private establishments, representatives of the sector, and institutes concerned by the resources. The modus operandi is described in a Charter and internal regulations. The members of the network agree not only to make their genetic resources available and circulate them, but contribute towards maintaining and assessing them too. Management applies to cultivated melon plants as well as wild forms and related species...

The objective of the network is thus the long-term management of a National Collection available for exchange or use.

Conservation and storage

Collection managed in 3 banks :

• a medium-bank, cold room (2°C and 30% HR) centralised bank (INRA) where all accessions are stored as long as possible before regeneration,
• each partner will keep a duplicate of the lots they propagated,
• an active bank for storing samples for redistribution.

Regeneration

Every 10 years :

for fixed stock (most common case) : from 2 to 5 plants per genotype (self-fertilisation conditions),
for populations : from 4 female plants pollinated by exchange of pollen from 20 to 30 plants

Distribution

Distribution lots of 20 to 30 seeds.

Evaluation and characterisation of genetic resources

The conservators conduct the evaluations and characterisations laid down according to the programmes approved by the network.
The database is under construction.

The network organization is based on the curators, the moderator, the coordination unit, the steering committee and the multilocal evaluation network.

The curators

Public establishments	Private establishments
GEVES, domaine de Cavaillon	ASL
	CLAUSE
INRA, station d'Avignon	NOVARTIS
	GAUTIER
	RIJK ZWAAN
	SEMINIS
	TAKII Recherche
	TEZIER

The moderator

Michel PITRAT (INRA Avignon), pitrat@avignon.inra.fr

The coordination unit

Under way.

The steering commitee

With the BRG representative, the INRA representative (Département de Génétique et d'Amélioration des Plantes : Plants Genetic and Improvement Department), the GEVES representative, the network moderator, the technical secretary in charge of the "vegetable" section at the C.T.P.S, the AFCEV representative (Association Française pour la Conservation des Espèces Végétales : French Association for the Conservation of Plant), the representative of the Ministry in charge of Agriculture , the FNPSPF representative, the GNIS representative, the conservator representatives, the CTIFL representative.