The five-year Crop Wild Relative Project led by Bioversity International, funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and implemented by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is promoting effective in situ conservation of crop wild relatives to ensure their continued availability for improving global food security, and to set precedents for conservation that the rest of the world can follow.

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International conservation agencies involved
Goals of the project
Project components
National partners
Armenia
Bolivia
Madagascar
Sri Lanka
Uzbekistan

International conservation agencies involved
Other international conservation agencies actively involved in the project are: the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI), the United Nations Environment Programme's World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the German Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food (BLE).

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Goals of the project
1. To develop international and national information systems on crop wild relatives that include data on species biology, ecology, conservation status, distribution, actual and potential uses, conservation actions and information sources.

2. To build the capacity of national partners to use this information for developing and implementing rational and cost-effective approaches to conserving crop wild relatives in situ.

3. To raise awareness among policymakers, conservation managers, plant breeders, educators and local users of the potential of crop wild relatives for improving agricultural sustainability.

The project's outputs will include tools and strategies that could be applied in many countries. In this way, the five partner countries will make a major contribution to the conservation of crop wild relatives worldwide.

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Project components
The project is designed to address the constraints to effective in situ conservation of crop wild relatives, including access to and management of information, capacity development, legal support for conservation, in situ conservation, increasing value through breeding and enhancing awareness of crop wild relatives in different sectors of society.

The challenge of effectively conserving crop wild relatives is enormous and cannot be undertaken by a single institution. Diverse organizations with environmental and agricultural missions must work collaboratively to conserve and use wild diversity. Botanic gardens have a special role to play in conserving biological diversity by raising awareness of particular groups of plants such as crop wild relatives. The crop wild relatives project has led to the establishment of collaborative partnerships at the national and international levels, which will continue to facilitate conservation and use of wild genetic resources well beyond the duration of this project.

Information systems

A major limitation to effective in situ crop wild relatives conservation is lack of capacity to gather and use information. Information on crop wild relatives does exist but it is dispersed among institutions in many countries. Multidisciplinary approaches are required to integrate and use the information available.

A major focus of the Project is the systematic compilation, access and use of information related to crop wild relatives. Analysis of this information is a first step towards developing and implementing national-level in situ conservation and monitoring strategies.

The Project is developing a global information system for easy access to information on crop wild relatives: the global crop wild relatives information portal will serve as gateway through which users will be able to search databases maintained by national project partners and international institutions. Building on the most recent developments in information harvesting such as those developed by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), the portal will provide access to internationally distributed and autonomous information sources; it will be launched internationally in early 2008.

To address the lack of national capacity to effectively manage crop wild relatives information, the open-source Genetic Resources Information System (GRIS) was developed by Bioversity for national project partners and others to manage both in situ and ex situ genetic resources information. It is envisaged that in the future, GRIS will be widely used to manage in situ, ex situ and on farm information, optimizing the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of information exchange between national and international users.

Conservation actions and capacity development

It is critical that conservation actions are supported by effective laws and policies. For this reason, the Project includes a component on reviewing the legal frameworks related to in situ conservation of genetic resources, including crop wild relatives, in each partner country. Ministries are now drafting new laws for conserving plant genetic resources and including crop wild relatives in their national action plans.

It is also essential to build the capacity of national partners to independently collect and analyze crop wild relatives germplasm, and make conservation decisions. Through the crop wild relatives Project, training has been delivered to national partners on World Conservation Union (IUCN) Red Listing procedures and data management. During 2007, partners are being trained in geographic information system (GIS) applications and modeling the impacts of climate change on crop wild relatives populations.

Conservation actions are being developed for high-priority crop wild relatives species and populations; national partners have identified 35 genera for conservation actions and each country is developing a management plan for at least one protected area that contains priority crop wild relatives. To date, Armenia has selected Erebuni Reserve for conserving wild relatives of wheat and other grains, and Uzbekistan has selected Ugam-Chatkal Natural National Park in the Tashkent region, which contains priority wild walnuts, almonds, apples and barley as well as other wild taxa. Guidelines for in situ conservation both inside and outside protected areas are being developed based on experiences in the partner countries.

Public awareness

Despite the many successes using crop wild relatives in crop breeding, they remain under-exploited and under-valued resources. A baselines survey showed that with exception of scientists, awareness of crop wild relatives among target groups was generally low. Many local communities, however, are familiar with crop wild relatives growing in their vicinity and understand their biological cycles and potential uses. In order for the Project's activities to lead to sustained conservation and use of crop wild relatives, it is imperative to raise the awareness of decision makers and the general public regarding the importance of in situ crop wild relatives conservation. Through the crop wild relatives Project, national and international level public relations programmes have been created, a range of public awareness material disseminated and live demonstration plots of crop wild relatives established.

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National partners

This project brings together five countries: Armenia, Bolivia, Madagascar, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan. Each country is among the world's biodiversity hotspots and has a remarkably rich and unique diversity of crop wild relatives, many of which have already contributed vital genes for crop improvement.

Armenia, Bolivia, Madagascar, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan each possesses a significant number of important taxa of crop wild relatives, some of which are highly threatened. These countries are the centres of diversity of a number of crops, including wheat in Armenia, potato in Bolivia, coffee in Madagascar, spices such as black pepper and cinnamon in Sri Lanka and nut trees including walnut and pistachio in Uzbekistan. Each country is also among the world's biodiversity hotspots: the richest and most threatened reservoirs of plant and animal life on earth, these hotspots contain the highest concentrations of unique biodiversity on the planet but are also the places at greatest risk of diversity loss.

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Armenia
Armenia possesses many species of wild relatives of domestic crops, including three of the four known wild species of wheat (Triticum boeticum, T. urartu and T. araraticum), many species belonging to the genus Aegilops (Ae. tauschii, Ae. cylindrica, Ae. triuncialis, etc.) and wild relatives of rye and barley. Wild apple and pear species grow in most of Armenia's forests along with wild forms of several other fruit and nuts such as quince, apricot, sweet and sour cherry, walnut, pistachio and fig. The Caucasus Mountains are Armenia's most significant geographical feature and determine much of the character of the country's biodiversity.

Priority Taxa

Cereals

• Triticum boeoticum Boiss.
• Triticum araraticum Jakubz.
• Triticum urartu Thum.ex Gandil.
• Aegilops tauschii Coss.

Pulses

• Vavilovia formosa (Stev.) Fed.

Vegetables

• Beta lomatogona

Fruits, berries and nuts

• Pyrus caucasica Fed. (pear)

Contact:
Armen Danielyan

Homepage:
http://www.cwr.am/

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Bolivia
Bolivia's location within the Andean region, where several important biomes are represented within a limited geographical area and where mountain ecosystems are prevalent, is rich in natural biodiversity. It lies within one of the world's centres of crop domestication and within centres of diversity of important crops such as potato, sweet potato, maize, peanut, cassava, cotton, tobacco, cocoa, beans, and pepper and several local Andean tubers such as Ullucus tuberosus, Oxalis spp., quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa), tarwi (Lupinus mutabilis), and others. Most wild relatives of these and other Bolivian species are tolerant of environmental and soil stresses, resistant to disease and possess other adaptive traits that could be useful for crop improvement.

Priority Taxa

• Annona (sugar apple)
• Rubus (blackberry)
• Cyphomandra (tree tomato)
• Carica (papaya)
• Phaseolus* (bean)
• Arachis (peanut)
• Capsicum (pepper)
• Chenopodium (quinoa)
• Solanum* (potato)
• Euterpe (palmito)
• Bactris (palm heart)
• Theobroma (cocoa)
• Anacardium (cashew)
• Manihot* (cassava)
• Ananas (pineapple)
• Ipomeae* (sweet potato)

(* crops listed in Annex 1 of International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture)

Contact:
Beatriz Zapata Ferrufino

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Madagascar
Madagascar's rich environment and climates have generated a remarkable natural biodiversity that is recognized throughout the world, much of which is associated with the island's mountain ecosystems. CWR in Madagascar include two wild relatives of rice (Oryza staminata and O. punctata), which possess virus and pest resistance, one wild relative of sorghum (Sorghum verticiflorum), two wild relatives of Vigna (V. vexillata and V. angivensis), and a wild relative of banana (Musa perrieri). Most significantly, almost 50 species of wild coffee (Mascarocoffea) with unique traits are found in the country.

Priority Taxa

• Oryza* (rice)
• Musa* (banana)
• Vanilla (vanilla)
• Dioscorea* (yam)
• Coffea (coffee)

(* crops listed in Annex 1 of International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture)

Contact:
Jeannot Ramelison

Homepage:
http://www.fofifa.mg/

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Sri Lanka
In terms of species, genes and ecosystems, Sri Lanka has very extensive forest- and agro-biodiversity. The highland areas support montane subtropical broadleaf hill forests and wet temperate forests. Important CWR include cereal relatives in the genera Ores, Digerati, Echinochloa and Panicum. There are also important legumes (Vigna, Dolichos), vegetables (Cucumis, Asparagus, Solanum, Ipomea), oil seeds (Sesamum, Dioscorea), fruits (Citrus, Diospyros, Mangifera, Musa) and other plants of economic significance (Cinnamomum, Curcuma, Tamarindus).

Priority Taxa

• Oryza* (rice)
• Musa* (banana)
• Vigna* (cowpea et al.)
• Cinnamomum (cinnamon)
• Piper (pepper)

(* crops listed in Annex 1 of International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture)

Contact:
Anura Wijesekara

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Uzbekistan
N. I. Vavilov identified Uzbekistan as one of the centres of origin of many modern crop plants. Uzbekistan forms part of a global centre of plant diversity in the mountains of Central Asia and it is also a centre of crop diversity. Uzbekistan is home to some of the nearest wild relatives of cultivated onion (Allium oshaninii, A. vavilovii, A. prae-mixtum, A. pskemense) and many wild fruit and nut species (Vitis vinifera, Pistacia vera, Malus sieversii, Pyrus turkomanica, and Rubus caesius).

Priority Taxa

• Malus (apple*)
• Allium (onion)
• Amygdalus (almond)
• Pistasia vera (pistachio)
• Juglans regia (walnut)
• Hordeum sp* (barley)

(* crops listed in Annex 1 of International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture)

Contact:
Sativaldi Djataev

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