A new paper in GRACE from our friends at IPK sent me scurrying to check out a new database. The snappily titled “The Garlic and Shallot Core Collection image database of IPK presenting two vegetatively maintained crops in the Federal ex situ genebank for agricultural and horticultural crops at Gatersleben, Germany,” by Christian Colmsee et al., describes the Garlic and Shallot Core Collection Database (GSCC). This database provides very nice photographs and morphological descriptor information on each accession in said core collection. You can get data on the whole collection, minus the photos, from IPK’s main database. And much the same minus the characterization data in Eurisco, but then you get all the other European Allium collections as well. ((Go to Genesys if you want to look at the USDA’s collection at the same time.)) I haven’t found a way to search either the core collection or the full collection on the basis of specific characterization descriptors but who knows, maybe the photos are enough for most Allium germplasm users. Perhaps someone from IPK can drop us a comment on their future plans for these databases.