Global conservation priorities for crop wild relatives.

Area of Science:

• Agricultural Science
• Conservation Biology
• Genetics

Background:

• Crop wild relatives (CWRs) are vital reservoirs of genetic diversity for enhancing crop productivity, nutrition, and resilience.
• The global conservation status and accessibility of CWR genetic resources remain largely unquantified, posing a risk to future crop improvement.

Purpose of the Study:

• To globally model the distribution of CWRs and assess the comprehensiveness of their conservation in gene banks.
• To identify critical gaps in germplasm collection and prioritize taxa and regions for future collecting efforts.

Main Methods:

• Modeled the global distribution of 1,076 CWR taxa across 81 crops using data from biodiversity, herbarium, and gene bank databases.
• Compared the geographic and ecological diversity of CWRs with their representation in ex situ gene banks.

Main Results:

• A significant portion of CWRs are poorly represented or entirely absent from gene banks, with 29.1% of taxa having no accessions and 23.9% having fewer than ten.
• Over 70% of CWR taxa are high priority for collection, and over 95% lack adequate representation of their native geographic and ecological diversity.
• Critical collecting gaps are identified in regions including the Mediterranean, Near East, Europe, Southeast Asia, East Asia, and South America.

Conclusions:

• Current gene bank collections inadequately represent the genetic diversity of crop wild relatives.
• Systematic and targeted efforts are urgently needed to enhance the conservation and availability of CWRs for plant breeding and food security.