GENRES: Information System on Genetic Resources
The GENRES information platform provides a quick overview of relevant news, specialist information, documents, projects, online databases, actors and other measures for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in the agricultural and food sectors. A newsletter gives information on current developments in this field on a quarterly basis.
GENRES is run by the Information and Coordination Centre for Biological Diversity (IBV) of the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE) as an online information system.
It supports the implementation of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture's (BMEL) "Conservation of agro-biodiversity, development and sustainable use of its potential in agriculture, forestry and fisheries” Strategy and the implementation of the National Technical Programmes for plant, animal, forest and aquatic genetic resources.
GENRES has also evolved into a tool for monitoring these technical programmes.
Structure of the information platform
GENRES provides extensive information in the specialised portals:
- Agro-biodiversity
- Crops and wild plants (plant genetic resources)
- Domestic and farm animals (animal genetic resources)
- Trees and bushes (forest genetic resources)
- Fish and aquatic animals (aquatic genetic resources)
- Micro-organisms and invertebrates
With the national inventories, GENRES provides extensive data on the stocks and collections of genetic resources in Germany as online databases. Further services include, for example, the database on Germany’s historical vegetable varieties, the red list of Germany's endangered native crops, the list of domestic livestock breeds or the database on the natural forest reserves.
An overview of international cooperation, access and benefit sharing, project promotion, sustainable consumption and the biodiversity networks supplements the services on offer.