In order to ensure the genetic diversity of fish stocks or other aquatic organisms, it may be necessary to conserve them outside their natural habitat and/or outside their normal husbandry environment. This can be done in so-called live gene banks or by means of cryopreservation. In live gene banks, breeding strains of endangered aquatic genetic resources are kept in the care of humans, e.g. to produce stocking material for resettlement projects. In cryopreservation, living cells (usually sperm) are stored in liquid nitrogen so that they can be used in the future to build up stocks of wild or farmed fish.
The AGRDEU database lists ex situ stocks of aquatic genetic resources. This section of the AGRDEU database is still under construction. Institutions that maintain ex situ aquatic genetic resources are invited to include their data in the AGRDEU database.
The on-farm inventory of aquatic genetic resources provides information on the following topics: