Monti Dauni district (Apulia region, southern Italy): an environment promoting on farm conservation of common bean landraces.

The results of the exploration missions for the gathering of legume germplasm in Monti Dauni district (southern Italy) are presented. The fifty-two percent of collected samples were common beans, mainly white seeded types. Information acquired in the frame of different research areas, such as passport data, GIS data, historical documents on crop cultivation in the study district, were integrated data with orthophotos and satellite images. This interdisciplinary approach allowed to obtain a multidimensional data set for the collected local varieties. A similar holistic approach permits a better knowledge of the link between the local varieties and the traditional area of cultivation, as well as the contextualization of their cultivation in both space and time. The merger of different information overcomes the limits derived from the use of a single methodology and might support local communities and policy-makers in the planning of effective actions aimed to safeguard the autochthonous germplasm.