Improving reproductive technologies for gene banking

Upstream, the objectives of WP3 are to develop and implement methods and tools to improve the cryoconservation and reproductive efficiency of biological samples. Downstream, its objective is to ensure the reliability of their use in breeding, e.g. for breed reconstitution. Priority will be given to the main impediments that hinder successful cryopreservation of genetic collections and/or hinder the use of genetic collections to generate offspring. Opportunities to develop collections and bottlenecks highly depend on species. WP3 will select the main technical impediments and develop innovative methods for sampling and storage. Some methods will be adapted to different species such as gonadic storage and transfer (grafting) in birds and mammals; or embryo cryopreservation (vitrification) and transfer for difficult mammalian resources (pigs). In domestic birds where only semen cryopreservation is available with a too highly variable success, alternatives to semen (PGCs, gonadic tissues in birds) will be developed and improvement in semen freezing methods will be pursued. WP3 will then develop new approaches to better predict the reproductive success of samples stored in cryobanks.

WP3 will result in novel technologies to be integrated in standard-operating procedures of gene banks such as:

• Methods and protocols for cryopreservation and use of semen, embryos, PGCs and gonadic tissues validated by in-vivo reproductive measurements.
• New phenomic tools for quality assessment of samples (fertility tests, biological functions, proteomic indicators reflecting reproductive ability) validated by large scale reproductive measurements.