The Federal Central Genebank for Agricultural and Horticultural Crops is located at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) in Gatersleben/Saxony-Anhalt. More than 150,000 seed samples of almost 3,000 different species are preserved there. This makes the genebank at the IPK one of the largest and most species-rich genebank collections in the world.

It makes an important contribution to preventing the loss of varieties of cultivated plants (gene erosion) and their related wild species. The collection is closely linked to the research work in the other departments of the IPK. Branches of the genebank are located in Groß Lüsewitz (potato collection: more than 6,200 accessions) and in Malchow/Poel (oil and fodder plants: more than 14,000 accessions of 150 species).

As an international information centre on taxonomy of cultivated plants, the genebank has extensive botanical reference collections, including a herbarium with over 390,000 specimens.

You can visit the English webseite of the IPK here.