In situ conservation of crop wild relatives through enhanced information management and field application

A UNEP/GEF PDF B Project linking countries and international conservation agencies

The need to conserve crop relatives

The wild relatives of crop plants include the progenitors of crops as well as species more or less closely related to them. Crop wild relatives are important both for improving agricultural production and for maintaining sustainable agroecosystems. The wise conservation and use of crop wild relatives are essential elements for increasing food security, eliminating poverty and maintaining the environment. The genes that come from crop wild relatives make a direct contribution to increased production, food quality and human wellbeing through poverty alleviation.

Crop wild relative species have already made substantial contributions to improving food production through the useful genes they contribute to new crop varieties. Genes that provide resistance to pests and diseases have been obtained from crop wild relatives and used in a wide range of crops, including rice (e.g., virus resistance from Oryza nivara), potato (e.g., potato blight), wheat (e.g., powdery mildew and rusts) and tomato (e.g. Fusarium and nematodes). Genes from crop relatives have been used to improve protein content in wheat and vitamin C content in tomato. Broccoli varieties producing high levels of anti-cancer compounds have been developed using genes obtained from wild Italian Brassica oleracea. Crop wild relatives have also been a source for genes for abiotic stress tolerance in many crops.

The natural populations of many species of crop wild relatives are increasingly at risk. They are threatened by habitat loss and by increasing destruction of natural environments. Destruction of forests is leading to the loss of many populations of important wild relatives of fruit, nut and industrial crops such as mango and rubber. Many cereal crop wild relatives, including wild wheat and millet species, occur in arid or semi-arid lands and are severely affected by over-grazing and desertification. Mountain areas, which may possess wild relatives of potato, tomato and fruit crops, are particularly vulnerable to the loss of wild relatives, as these fragile ecosystems are easily eroded as population pressure increases. Crop wild relatives are also traditionally found as natural inhabitants of agroecosystems, in and around farms; the increasing industrialization of agriculture is reducing their occurrence.

Many species of important crop wild relatives are found in centers of plant diversity and crop diversity in developing countries, which often lack resources to invest in the necessary conservation activities. Additional resources are urgently needed in such areas of high diversity to identify species that should have conservation priority, determine the necessary conservation activities, monitor key species' status, improve the use of these valuable resources in supporting production systems less dependant on external inputs such as pesticides, and ensure that communities in these areas obtain full benefits from the use of these resources.

A global project to support conservation of crop relatives

In order to meet the urgent need to improve conservation of crop wild relatives, a global project is being developed. Five countries (Armenia, Bolivia, Madagascar, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan), all within centers of plant or crop diversity, are working together with a number of international agencies (IPGRI, FAO, BGCI, DIVERSITAS, IUCN and WCMC) to identify the necessary conservation actions and to develop a tested information access and management system with worldwide application.

The global objective of the project is the safe and effective conservation of crop wild relatives and their increased availability for crop improvement in Armenia, Bolivia, Madagascar, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan. The conservation status of crop wild relatives in the participating countries will be determined. Dispersed information held by the countries and partner international agencies will be brought together. Decision making procedures that allow countries to identify priority conservation actions will be developed and tested, and the priority conservation actions that have been identified will be carried out.

Key elements of the project

The information needed to conserve crop wild relatives is often dispersed among different national and international organizations. Many countries also have conservation activities (e.g. national reserves or parks) that could help secure crop relatives, but the information and directed management needed to focus on these species is lacking. The project will:

• Bring together dispersed information from national and international sources on the identity of crop wild relatives in the 5 countries, and their status, distribution and potential use.

• Determine the existing conservation status with respect to in situ and ex situ activities (e.g. presence in protected areas and in gene banks).

• Develop an information management or access system that allows countries and other agencies to identify conservation status and needs of crop wild relatives. The system will have the potential to link global information resources to national ones.

• Identify conservation actions for species and populations found to have highest priority for interventions.

• Undertake in situ conservation with local communities, combining security for the crop relatives with increase use and realization of benefits by local people.

Developing the project

In order to develop the full project proposal, and to reach the global aim of the project, GEF is supporting a one year project development phase (PDF B), with the following objectives:

• To identify information available on the status of crop wild relatives’ conservation in Armenia, Bolivia, Madagascar, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan.

• To review current experiences with conservation of crop wild relatives throughout the world.

• To develop the framework for an information management system with national and international features that will support improved conservation and use of wild relatives.

• To develop and design the full project

The project development process is being coordinated by IPGRI with the help of FAO. An International Steering Committee has been established and a coordinator appointed to support the work of the partners. Within each country, a range of different organizations and groups will work together to review the current situation and identify the key elements that will be needed in the full project to achieve their objectives. International partners will explore ways of linking their information and combining it with that from the partner countries. In this way a global project will be developed that meets the needs of the countries and the objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Contact Toby Hodgkin, Principle Scientist, GRST about this project