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Global conservation priorities for crop wild relatives

Nature Plants volume 2, Article number: 16022 (2016) Cite this article

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Abstract

The wild relatives of domesticated crops possess genetic diversity useful for developing more productive, nutritious and resilient crop varieties. However, their conservation status and availability for utilization are a concern, and have not been quantified globally. Here, we model the global distribution of 1,076 taxa related to 81 crops, using occurrence information collected from biodiversity, herbarium and gene bank databases. We compare the potential geographic and ecological diversity encompassed in these distributions with that currently accessible in gene banks, as a means to estimate the comprehensiveness of the conservation of genetic diversity. Our results indicate that the diversity of crop wild relatives is poorly represented in gene banks. For 313 (29.1% of total) taxa associated with 63 crops, no germplasm accessions exist, and a further 257 (23.9%) are represented by fewer than ten accessions. Over 70% of taxa are identified as high priority for further collecting in order to improve their representation in gene banks, and over 95% are insufficiently represented in regard to the full range of geographic and ecological variation in their native distributions. The most critical collecting gaps occur in the Mediterranean and the Near East, western and southern Europe, Southeast and East Asia, and South America. We conclude that a systematic effort is needed to improve the conservation and availability of crop wild relatives for use in plant breeding.

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Figure 1: Crop wild relative taxon richness map.
Figure 2: Collecting and conservation priorities for crop wild relatives by associated crop.
Figure 3: Collecting priorities for crop wild relatives and the importance of associated crops.
Figure 4: Proposed hotspots for further collecting activities for high-priority crop wild relatives.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Wiersema and B. León for major contributions to taxonomic concepts; the herbaria, gene banks, researchers and other sources that contributed occurrence data to the analysis (Supplementary Table 3); the expert evaluators of gap analysis results (Supplementary Table 4); S. Calderón, I. Vanegas, H. Tobón, D. Arango, H. Dorado and E. Guevara for data inputs and processing; and S. Prager for comments. This work was undertaken as part of the project ‘Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: Collecting, Protecting and Preparing Crop Wild Relatives’, which is supported by the Government of Norway. The project is managed by the Global Crop Diversity Trust and the Millennium Seed Bank of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and implemented in partnership with national and international gene banks and plant breeding institutes around the world. For further information, visit the project website: http://www.cwrdiversity.org/. Funding was also provided by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security, Cali, Colombia.

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Author notes

  1. Nora P. Castañeda-Álvarez and Colin K. Khoury: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Km 17, Recta Cali-Palmira, Cali 763537, Colombia

    Nora P. Castañeda-Álvarez, Colin K. Khoury, Harold A. Achicanoy, Vivian Bernau, Andy Jarvis, Julian Ramirez-Villegas & Chrystian C. Sosa

  2. School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK

    Nora P. Castañeda-Álvarez, Nigel Maxted & Holly Vincent

  3. Centre for Crop Systems Analysis, Wageningen University, Droevendaalsesteeg 1, 6708 PB Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Colin K. Khoury & Paul C. Struik

  4. Global Crop Diversity Trust, Platz der Vereinten Nationen 7, 53115 Bonn, Germany

    Hannes Dempewolf, Luigi Guarino & Jane Toll

  5. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Conservation Science, Millennium Seed Bank, Wakehurst Place, Ardingly RH17 6TN, UK

    Ruth J. Eastwood, Ruth H. Harker & Jonas V. Müller

  6. CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), Km 17, Recta Cali-Palmira, Cali 763537, Colombia

    Andy Jarvis & Julian Ramirez-Villegas

  7. Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    Julian Ramirez-Villegas

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  1. Nora P. Castañeda-Álvarez
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Contributions

N.P.C.-A., C.K.K., H.D., R.J.E., L.G., A.J., N.M., J.M., J.R-V. and J.T. conceived and designed the study. N.P.C.-A., C.K.K., H.D., R.J.E., R.H.H., A.J., N.M., J.R-V., C.C.S. and H.V. acquired and contributed data. N.P.C.-A., C.K.K., H.A.A., V.B. and C.C.S. processed the data, performed the analyses and analysed the results. N.P.C.-A., C.K.K., H.D., R.J.E., L.G., A.J., N.M. and J.M. interpreted the results and wrote the manuscript. N.P.C.-A., C.K.K., V.B., H.D., R.J.E., L.G., A.J., N.M., J.M., J.R-V. and P.C.S. edited the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nora P. Castañeda-Álvarez.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Castañeda-Álvarez, N., Khoury, C., Achicanoy, H. et al. Global conservation priorities for crop wild relatives. Nature Plants 2, 16022 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2016.22

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