A crop wild relative inventory for Southern Africa: a first step in linking conservation and use of valuable wild populations for enhancing food security

Abstract

Successful conservation strategies require that taxa are prioritized because resources for planning and implementation are always limited. In this study, we created a partial checklist of crop wild relatives (CWR) that occur in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region and identified the taxa of highest priority for regional conservation planning based on their importance for food and economic security. We found that the region contains over 1900 wild relatives of species cultivated for food, beverages, ornamental, forage/fodder, forestry, medicinal, environmental and other uses. Prioritization of these species was based on two criteria: (i) the value of the related crop for human food and economic security in the region and/or globally, and (ii) the potential or known value of the wild relatives of those crops for crop improvement. The region contains 745 CWR species related to 64 human food and beverage crops that are of high socioeconomic importance and 100 of these are of immediate priority for conservation action. The results of this study show that the SADC region contains a wealth of CWR diversity that is not only of value for food and economic security within the region but also globally. Furthermore, this study represents the first step in developing a CWR conservation and sustainable use strategy for the region, where its implementation would contribute to food security and well-being.

Setting conservation priorities for the wild relatives of food crops in Indonesia

“…Plant yielding non-seed carbohydrates (Flach and Rumawas 1996) Bananas and plantain Ensete (1), Musa (25) 26Roots and tubers Amorphophallus (29), Curcuma (19), Cyperus (63), Cyrtosperma (6), (Allen et al 2019), andZambia (Ng'uni et al 2019) but lower compared to China (Kell et al 2015). This paper also aims to raise the awareness of Indonesian stakeholders to include CWR as valuable assets for conservation and breeding programs.…”

Main Challenges and Actions Needed to Improve Conservation and Sustainable Use of Our Crop Wild Relatives

“…A number of other global priority lists, typically developed in the context of specific projects, are less comprehensive, have less well defined or complex criteria, and have not been used as widely as the list by Vincent et al [29]. Two African regional checklists [31,32] and several national checklists and inventories have also been developed and are available on the CWR global portal [33].…”

In situ and ex situ conservation gap analyses of crop wild relatives from Malawi

“…Crop wild relatives (CWR) have potential use in crop improvement (Hajjar and Hodgkin 2007;Vincent et al 2013). Many crops cultivated in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region and of global importance such as cotton, wheat, maize, coffee and rice have benefited from adaptive traits originating from CWR (Brar 2005;Edmé et al 2005;Hajjar and Hodgkin 2007;Vincent et al2013;Allen et al 2017;Allen et al 2019). However, their conservation has been grossly passive with very low representation in many gene banks (Castañeda-Á lvarez et al 2016;Phillips et al 2016;Contreras-Toledo et al 2019).…”

“…Recognizing the need for improved crop production to meet with increasing food demand in the face of unprecedented livelihood damage and biodiversity loss, the SADC region developed a regional inventory of CWR potential for crop improvement (Allen et al 2019). Currently, the region is developing a CWR conservation strategy in an effort to link conservation and utilization of CWR (Magos Brehm et al in prep).…”