The CIRAD Cotton Germplasm Col­lection was founded in 1978 through the pooling of a number of working collections. It is one of the largest collec­tions in the world representing genetic variability in the genus Gossypium L. In 2005, it contained 3070 accessions, including 1696 cultivars and 1374 wild and ancestral types, covering five tetra­ploid species and seven diploid species. The two main cultivated cotton spe­cies, G. hirsutum L. and G. barbadense L., accounted for 68% and 15% of the accessions, respectively. The cultivars originated from around a hundred countries, and the ancestral species ac­cessions were collected during expedi­tions conducted between 1980 and 1988. Part of the ancestral type collection (894 accessions) was assembled with fund­ing from IBPGR (now Bioversity In­ternational), and these accessions were handed over to CIRAD for conserva­tion, assessment and release.