Crop wild relative

The wild relatives of crop plants constitute an increasingly important resource for improving agricultural production and for maintaining sustainable agro-ecosystems.

[1][2][3] With the advent of anthropogenic climate change and greater ecosystem instability CWRs are likely to prove a critical resource in ensuring food security for the new millennium.

More recently, plant breeders have utilised CWR genes to improve a wide range of crops like rice (Oryza sativa), tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) and grain legumes.

Populations of wild relatives of cereal crops that occur in arid or semi-arid lands are being severely reduced by over grazing and resulting desertification.

Over 70% of all crop wild relative species worldwide were in urgent need of further collecting to improve their representation in genebanks, and over 95% were insufficiently represented with regard to the full range of geographic and ecological variation in their native distributions.

Wild emmer wheat ( Triticum dicoccoides ), a CWR of cultivated wheats ( Triticum spp), can be found in northern Israel .
Two conservationists collecting indigenous knowledge on cultural practices that favour CWR populations, from a farmer near Fes , Morocco.
Example of one of the first genetic reserves established to conserve CWRs near Kalakh al Hosn, Syria
Geographic hotspots of distributions of crop wild relatives not represented in genebanks
Cajanus scarabaeoides is one of the closest wild relatives to the cultivated pigeonpea and has high drought tolerance and high protein content. Being screened at the campus of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in Patancheru , India.