The Distributions and Ex Situ Conservation of Crop Wild Relatives: A Global Approach

Under the umbrella of the 'Adapting agriculture to climate change: collecting, protecting and preparing the crop wild relatives' project, more than 1000 crop wild relative (CWR) taxa have been assessed to determine how well represented they currently are in genebanks that are accessible to the global plant breeding community. Likewise, the regions where such taxa are likely to occur have been mapped, identifying geographic hotspots of CWR species richness, as well as locations where further collecting of plant material is highly recommended. The main outputs of this assessment helped to guide decisions regarding which regions and countries should be selected to collect samples of CWR evaluated as high priorities for ex situ conservation. This chapter presents the methodology, results and discussion of this study