What is an accession?

An accession is a group of related plant material from a single species which is collected at one time from a specific location. Each accession is an attempt to capture the diversity present in a given population of plants. Accessions are given a unique identifier, an accession number, which is used to maintain associated information in the GRIN database. This is similar to call numbers that libraries use, except instead of books we are able to manage plants.