Planning for an Exploration/collection: Climatic conditions, soil type, topography, agricultural practices were considered in selecting collection sites and crops to be collected. Information of environmental factors, crops, and their varieties, landraces, wild species were collected from local extension agencies, published weather reports, reviews of reports of the previous collection of PGRC, BARI. The coarse grid sampling method was adopted in collecting germplasm from a pre-identified sample site to ensure no important diversity is missed in an ecosystem. Another feature of this strategy is that survey can be suspended and resumed as necessary by the explorer/collector because areas are pre-identified.
Team building and local supports: At the onset of the collection mission, a three-member collecting team comprising the scientists of Plant Genetic Resources Centre (PGRC), headed by the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO)/PGRC was built. A lady scientist was included in the team. The team cooped local DAE personnel of the targeted areas. Necessary contacts with DAE and regional/substations of BARI were made by CSO to make logistic support available during the collection trip. A four-wheel four-door carry-boy Jeep was used for traveling to the sites. Three to four sample from each area was collected depending on the available diversity.
Passport Data: Information that comprises the passport data include: date of collection, exact location, identification, characteristics, the ecological condition of collection site, accession numbers allocated to accession by the collector, collector’s number, and any other relevant information. A sample passport data form included
Collection site data: Name of the farmer(s), description of the site (edaphic, climatic, distance from the nearby city, rivers, and hill direction, nearby water bodu if any should be written. The data is important for recollection or as a backup of the germplasm conserving in the genebank.
Data analysis: Species diversity (Simpson’s Diversity Index), character richness (Shannon diversity index), etc. were adopted to assume ago-biodiversity and diversity of the existing crop species. Species richness and abundance of cultivated crops in the current agro-biodiversity were estimated.
Species richness and abundance (S): Species richness is the number of different species present in an area. More the number of species present in a sample, the more the richness of the area. The number of individuals of a species was accounted as the abundance and expressed in percentage
Collecting Strategy and sampling strategy: Limited number of samples were collected without being influenced by the qualities of germplasm or the preferences of the collector.