Bioversity International

An introduction to crop wild relatives

Passion fruit, Bolivia. Crop wild relatives are a valuable source of variation that can be used to help crops adapt to changing environmental conditions and human needs. A.Lane /Bioversity International

Crop wild relatives include crop ancestors as well as other species more or less closely related to crops. They are a critical source of genes for resistance to diseases, pests and stresses such as drought and extreme...

The Crop Wild Relatives Project

Vegetables on display at a bazaar in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan is one of the five countries involved in the Crop Wild Relatives Project. A. Lane/ Bioversity International

Bringing together five countries—Armenia, Bolivia, Madagascar, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan—the Crop Wild Relatives Project aims to protect natural populations of crop wild relatives while setting a precedent for conservation that...

Use crop wild relatives or lose them!

Wild onion, Italy. Crop wild relatives hold immense potential for helping agriculture meet future challenges

Despite the immense diversity of wild relatives and their potential to resist challenges ranging from disease to drought, wild relatives are little used in crop improvement efforts.

Using crop relatives involves crossing the...

Wild foods are rich in micronutrients

The Maasai consume a diet rich in animal fats and yet they do not suffer from diet-related health problems or diseases associated with high fat consumption. Researchers attribute this to the fact that they regularly eat wild plants. S. Mann/ILRI

Wild foods from the forests, many of which boast substantial levels of necessary micronutrients, ranging from vitamin A to iron and zinc, are an alternative solution.Policies governing forest management and those dealing with...

The benefits of foods from the forests

A villager in north-east Thailand returns from the forest with a harvest of wild tubers. L. Thomson/Bioversity International

A study of eating habits in north-east Thailand reveals that wild foods gathered from forests and field margins make up half of the food intake of rural communities during the rainy season.

The study, which took place in three...

The value of wild relatives

A wild relative of rice provided resistance to grassy stunt virus, a disease that caused devastating losses to farmers across South and South-East Asia in the 1970s. Sri Lanka. A. Lane/Bioversity International

A wild tomato has allowed plant breeders to boost the level of solids in commercial varieties by 2.4%, an increase worth US$250 million annually to farmers in California (USA) alone.Meanwhile, three different wild peanuts have...

Bringing crop relatives to the public

The entrance to Sri Lanka’s Agriculture Information Park. A. Wijesekara

The Sri Lankan Department of Agriculture is taking advantage of its beautiful setting to bring the story of agriculture—including the role played by wild relative— directly to the public.

The Department of Agriculture is the...

Spicy relatives get some respect

Bundles of cinnamon sticks ready to be sold at markets in Sri Lanka. Cinnamon earns the nation US$60 million annually. A. Wijesekara

Cinnamon is big business in Sri Lanka, with the potential to get even bigger if efforts to safeguard the wild relatives of the spice succeed.

More than 100 000 Sri Lankans depend on cinnamon for their livelihoods. An important...

The importance of wild bananas in Sri Lanka

Close-up of a banana flower, Sri Lanka. Banana is the most important fruit crop in Sri Lanka. D. Yakandawela

Banana has been a favourite fruit in Sri Lanka from time immemorial. The remains of a wild banana species, Musa balbisiana (locally known as 'ati kehel'), have been found at prehistoric cave sites.

The finding indicates that...

Wild relatives offer new lease on life to ancient grain

Women preparing lavash A. Danielian

The Armenian highlands are home to a rich diversity of crop wild relatives.

Some are ancestors of cultivated varieties; others cross freely with their related cultigens and can be used in breeding or to study the relationship...

Global conference maps out future for wild relatives

Wild pea vine found in central and southern Europe. L. Udvardy

Although the wild relatives of crop plants have been used by farmers for millennia and by plant breeders for over a century, remarkably, efforts to ensure the continued availability of these valuable resources are very...

Regional catalogue supports national strategies

The Crop Wild Relatives Catalogue for Europe and the Mediterranean was created by matching the regional flora (held in the Euro+Med Plantbase: www.euromed.org.uk) with specialist socio-economic plant databases. Individual country catalogues can be extracted by filtering the regional database.

Recently, 21 European countries worked together to catalogue the full range of cultivated and wild plants of socio-economic importance in the European and Mediterranean regions.Europe may not be the first region to come to mind...

Putting diversity back into wheat

Three synthetic wheats (right) derived from crosses of durum wheat (left) with wild grass species. CIMMYT

Researchers are using wild relatives to create wheat varieties containing valuable traits that were thought to have been lost forever, watered down by thousands of years of wheat breeding.

When farmers started to domesticate...

Protecting the wild relatives of walnut

Walnuts are a good source of omega-3 fatty acids and can help lower cholesterol.E. Butkov

The Persian or common walnut (Juglans regia) is native to Central Asia.

This species has been widely cultivated for many thousands of years, but its wild relatives have been sadly neglected, putting them at risk of...

Saving Central Asia's pistachio diversity

Pistachio plays an important role in the culture and culinary traditions of Central Asia. L. Nikolyai

Considered a delicacy since the beginning of recorded time, the pistachio has been cultivated for centuries throughout Central Asia, where it originated.

Pistachio nuts are eaten fresh or roasted and are also used in ice cream...

Ask the old women: the search for hardy survivors

Clive Francis, CLIMA, collecting seeds in Armenia, July 2005. Brad Collins/Coretext

Scientists are on a hunt for genes in the land where farming began, searching for lost genetic resources that scientists say will be crucial for the world to keep feeding itself as climate change and deteriorating agricultural...

Tapping the potential of medicinal and aromatic plants in northern Europe

Roseroot, a wild plant used to combat depression, has gone into commercial production in Norway and Finland. A. Asdal

In northern Europe, biodiversity programmes are looking to wild species as a new source of commercial products and, in so doing, are creating an economic motive for their conservation.

The inhabitants of Nordic and Baltic...

Climate change threatens wild relatives with extinction

A vegetable stall in Cochabamba, Bolivia, boasts a striking display of potato diversity. A recent study by IRRI and Bioversity International estimates that up to 13 of 107 wild species of potato being studied could become extinct by 2055. A.Lane/Bioversity International

As global temperatures continue to rise, crop wild relatives are threatened with extinction at the very time they are needed the most.

Climate change is making major new demands on crop diversity as well as creating new...

Wild potato relative may blunt late blight

Antonio Rivera Pena, researcher in Mexico, examines a wild potato. researchers have identified and isolated a gene in a wild potato that could confer resistance to late blight. V. Heywood

Late blight, the disease that laid waste to Ireland's potato fields in the 1840s, continues to cut a deadly swath through agriculture over a century and a half later.

But tomorrow's tubers may have protection against this...

On the rocks

Cliffs in Trapani, western Sicily, Italy, home to various species of brassica wild relatives. V. Heywood

While much attention is given to the benefits to be obtained from the use of crop wild relatives in breeding, it is worth sparing a thought for the problems of collecting these plants from the wild. Crop wild relatives...