Botany 2011- Colin Khoury_614

614 KHOURY, COLIN*1, GREENE,
STEPHANIE2 and CASTAÑEDA ALVAREZ,
NORA PATRICIA1
Initial Steps toward a National
Conservation Strategy for Crop Wild
Relatives of the United States
An effective strategy for conservation of biodiversity
worldwide requires a spectrum of actions
enacted from the global to the local level. Agricultural
biodiversity is no exception, and the wild relatives of
crops (CWR), as important genetic resources for crop
improvement, represent a dual challenge of requiring
conservation as well as access for use. In many regions
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these resources are threatened by habitat modification,
land use changes, and other factors, requiring their urgent
collection and long-term availability for research
and breeding from ex situ genebank collections, as well
as their adequate protection in situ in order to support
an evolving genepool for the uses of the future. CWR resources
are often globally important, yet their management
is dependent upon national policy and interests.
We suggest that an effective national approach toward
the conservation of CWR entails the systematic coverage
of this diversity in a network of genetic reserves,
with samples of this diversity safeguarded in national
genebanks. We present the work to date on planning
for a national effort to conserve CWR and economically
important taxa that are native or naturalized in the
United States. We are developing a national inventory
of taxa that represent CWR of the world's crops, or are
directly used for food, fiber, forage, forestry, industrial,
medicinal, ornamental, and restoration purposes, which
currently contains close to 3,000 taxa. We have also
developed a methodology for identification of the genepools
of the world's important crops. Especially species-
rich native genepools of important crops include
Allium (onion), Carya (pecan), Fragaria (strawberry),
Helianthus (sunflower), Hordeum (barley), Ipomoea
(sweet potato), Lactuca (lettuce), Nicotiana (tobacco),
Phaseolus (bean), Prunus (cherry, almond,peach), Ribes
(currant), Rubus (raspberry), Vaccinium (blueberry,
cranberry), and Vitis (grape), and many additional genera
are also represented. We conclude by discussing our
next steps for developing a national conservation strategy
for crop wild relatives: prioritizing taxa by relatedness
to crop species, assessing the coverage of CWR in
genebanks and in protected areas, and making recommendations
for conservation actions.
1International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Decision
and Policy Analysis Program, Km 17, Recta Cali-Palmira, Apartado
Aéreo 6713, Cali, Colombia2United States Department of Agriculture,
Agricultural Research Service, National Temperate Forage
Legume Germplasm Resources Unit, 24106 North Bunn Road,
Prosser, WA, 99350, USA

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Science & Technology

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• Colin
• Khoury