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The INRAE Centre for Vegetable Germplasm in Avignon conserves more than 6500 accessions of aubergine, tomato, pepper and their wild relatives in the form of seeds kept in the cold and regenerated every 15 years. Amongst these accessions, about 10% correspond to wild relatives that are difficult, even impossible, to regenerate under our typical culture conditions (annual cycles in the greenhouse) and risk disappearing.

The SESAM project aims to test new culture methods to allow these accessions to be saved by working on different possible causes which could be a barrier to their regeneration.

The first step of the project involved a literature study of the 141 species concerned in order to understand their natural growth habitat, developmental cycle and reproductive system. This initial study led to the creation of a database and the definition of new culture methods which were better suited to these threatened species.

The new culture conditions included longer periods of culture, drier conditions or different photoperiods and were tested between August 2019 and December 2020 on 48 accessions of 32 species which were identified as being particularly at risk. Amongst these, 6 did not survive the winter, and 24 of the remaining 26 species flowered in Spring 2020. Despite the obvious difficulties encountered in 2020, we managed to regenerate 27 accessions of 16 threatened species and think that the new culture methods could improve the regeneration of at least 14 other species. This will be tested in 2021, the accessions have been sown in August 2020.