Although 7043 Daucus accessions are present in GENESYS , few accessions originate from its centre of diversity in Central Asia. Analysing in detail the GRIN and EURISCO databases, it was found that only 120 accessions from this region are currently available for distribution (Table 1).
Table 1. Available accessions per Central Asian country as presented in the GRIN and EURISCO databases; in the GRIN/EURISCO column the number of accessions included in both databases are given.
| Country | GRIN | GRIN/EURISCO | EURISCO | Total |
| Afghanistan | 3 | 17 | 3 | 23 |
| Iran | 1 | 15 | 9 | 25 |
| Kazakhstan | 6 | 0 | 1 | 7 |
| Kyrgyzstan | 1 | 0 | 8 | 9 |
| Pakistan | 1 | 8 | 4 | 13 |
| Tajikistan | 4 | 0 | 1 | 5 |
| Turkmenistan | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Uzbekistan | 15 | 0 | 23 | 38 |
| Total | 31 | 40 | 49 | 120 |
Because of the low number of Daucus carota accessions from the centre of diversity, an area where one can expect that the species contains most of its genetic diversity, a collecting expedition was undertaken in order to collect additional wild populations and landraces of carrot. The countries in which the collecting expedition was carried out were Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Analysing the 120 accessions that are currently available from ex situ collections, it was found that overall 61% (= 73/120) was a landrace. Therefore the focus of the expedition was on the collecting of wild populations.
The collecting expedition resulted in an increase of the CGN Daucus collection with 112 unique accessions amongst which 22 landraces.
Sampling carrot landraces at the bazar