Bryophyte conservation biology: In vitro approach to the ex situ conservation of bryophytes from Europe

Abstract

Like all other plants, bryophytes suffer from various threats in a rapidly changing environment. Compared with vascular plants, they have received significantly less conservation attention, and the issues around their conservation have been a subject of study for little more than 30 years. Very few documented actions have been taken to halt the decline in bryophyte diversity (including genetic, species and habitat conservation). The ex situ approach is one of the most recently developed methods in the conservation initiative but it is rarely applied to bryophyte conservation. Lately, significant advances have been made in in vitro bryophyte biotechnology as a component of ex situ propagation. In this article, we discuss the current state of knowledge, associated problems and achievements, with reference to the ex situ bryophyte collection of the Bryophyte Biology Group in Belgrade.

Keywords::

• Bryophytes
• conservation
• ex situ
• in vitro
• Europe

Acknowledgements

Marko Sabovljević thanks Prof. Dr Annalena Cogoni (University of Cagliari) for encouraging the preparation of this manuscript, and offering the opportunity to give a lecture at the Bryological Meeting of the Italian Botanical Society at University of Cagliari (July 2013). We thank Mr. Tom Blockeel for improvement of the English text. We also gratefully acknowledge the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of the Republic of Serbia for research grants 173024 and 173030.