Enhancing sustainability through the use of
crop wild relatives
Crop wild relatives (CWR) – species or other taxa more
or less closely related to crops, which include most of the
progenitors of our domesticated types – have made a very
significant contribution to modern agricultural production
through the characteristics that they have contributed to
plant cultivars.
Over the last 100 years, crop wild relatives have become
increasingly important as sources of useful genes. For ex-
ample, they have contributed resistance to pest and disease
(e.g,. resistance to late blight in potato and grassy stunt vi-
rus in rice, which came from a single accession of Oryza ni-
vara found in Orissa, India) and to abiotic stress. They have
also increased nutritional values such as protein and vita-
min content. The economic returns from investment in CWR
can be striking; for example, genetic material from a tomato
wild relative has allowed plant breeders to boost the level
of solids in commercial varieties by 2.4%, which is worth
US$250 million annually to processors in California alone
(FAO, 1998).
The natural populations of many crop wild relatives are in-
creasingly at risk, mainly from habitat loss, degradation and
fragmentation. Moreover, the increasing industrialization of
agriculture is reducing populations of crop wild relatives in
and around farms. They are often missed by conservation
programmes, falling between the efforts of agricultural and
environmental conservation actions. A major global effort,
coordinated by Bioversity International and supported by
UNEP GEF, to find ways of securing the improved conserva-
tion of crop wild relatives is in progress in 5 countries (Ar-
menia, Bolivia, Madagascar, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan) in
collaboration with a number of international agencies (FAO,
UNEP-WCMC, IUCN and Botanic Gardens Conservation In-
ternational – BGCI)
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