The Tropical Plant Germplasm Bank of XTBG (formerly: Rare, Endangered and Endemic Plant Germplasm Bank, REEP), established in 1997, is one of the major germplasm banks in China for the research, collection and conservation of important biological resources.    
   The TPGB, with storage area of 144 m² and capacity of 150,000 items, has a perfect condition for conservation of wild plant germplasm. It is built according with the international counterpart standard: with four main storage rooms at -18^oC, 4^oC and 15^oC respectively for seed storage, cryobiology facility and tissue culture repository, and is also equipped with relatively complete testing system for the water content and the viability of seeds.
     The seed biology laboratory, with the area of 300 m², can provide the main research methods and facilities for the experiments on plant physiology, cellular and molecular biology. Based on the techniques of the traditional physiology and the modern molecular biology, especially the proteomics methods, the mechanisms of seed desiccation tolerance can be deeply explored. Those in-depth molecular explorations can provide scientific guidelines for conservation, exploration and utilization of plant germplasm.
     After seven years’operation, now the TPGB is contained 7200 plant items (including 116 families, 412 genera, 755 species), accounting for 10% species of the total Chinese tropical and subtropical plants, and 1151 unidentified items. Besides binding up the original data in series, database system including all the information on seeds is also completed.

Link to:  In Vitro Plant Germplasm Collection (IVPGC)