Work package 3: crop wild relative conservation

Lead partner: UoB. Involved partners: UoB, BIOVER, UNIPG, MTT, URJC

Work package leader: Dr Nigel Maxted, The University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, Email: s.kell@bham.ac.uk

Objectives

The objective is to identify the relevant management interventions that will secure and improve the in situ and ex situ conservation of European crop wild relative (CWR) diversity as a means of supporting CWR use by breeders through the formulation of a systematic European CWR conservation strategy. Prior to the development of such a strategy it is necessary to have an understanding of the natural diversity of European CWR species and their current conservation status. To achieve this objective, this work package has four subordinate objectives:

  1. European and national CWR inventories – produce national and Europe-wide inventories of CWR diversity that contain basic biodiversity data and are moderated by national PGR programmes.
  2. Exemplar national CWR conservation strategies – detailed CWR conservation strategy case studies for Finland, Italy, Spain and the UK that prioritize in situ and ex situ conservation actions.
  3. European priority gene pool CWR conservation strategy – CWR conservation strategy that reviews European CWR wealth and conservation status, prioritizes in situ and ex situ conservation actions, and links to breeder-based exploitation of CWR diversity.
  4. European generic CWR conservation strategy – drawing on all elements of the workpackage research, formulate a strategic and systematic European CWR conservation strategy that establishes conservation priorities and makes links to breeders demands.

Description of work

To develop a systematic European CWR conservation strategy the work is divided into four subordinate tasks:

Task 3.1. European and national CWR inventories. Task leader: UoB. Involved partners: UoB, BIOVER and UNIPG

The production of the European CWR inventory will be derived from individual national CWR inventories building on the associated experience generated from two previous European funded projects: EC FP5 funded “European Crop Wild Relative Diversity Assessment and Conservation Forum (PGR Forum)” and EC Gen Res funded “An Integrated European In Situ Management Work plan: Implementing Genetic Reserves and On Farm Concepts (AEGRO)”. The methodology has been experimentally applied to the creation of a national CWR inventory for the United Kingdom, but will now be extended and tested at a broader scale across Europe.

Task 3.2. Exemplar national CWR conservation strategies. Task leaders: MTT in Finland, UNIPG in Italy, URJC in Spain and UoB in the UK. Involved partners: UoB, UNIPG, MTT and URJC

Both the previous European funded projects, EC FP5 funded PGR Forum and EC Gen Res funded AEGRO developed CWR conservation methodologies at the European scale using a top-down approach that focused on target crop gene pools. To take the concepts to the next level it is necessary that they are developed further at the national scale using a bottom-up approach focusing on the entire national CWR flora. Therefore, it is necessary for the project to fund targeted national CWR inventory case studies in Finland, Italy, Spain and the UK that may subsequently act as exemplars for the other countries in Europe. The selection of Finland, Italy, Spain and the UK will maximize the diversity of methodological approach in terms of sub-regions of Europe, numbers of CWR present and actual CWR diversity included, but also countries likely to provide real divergence of approach to inventory production resulting in a robust methodology for subsequent application in other European countries.

Task 3.3. European priority gene pool CWR conservation strategy. Task leader: UoB. Involved partners: UoB, BIOVER, UNIPG, MTT and URJC

In order to meet the call’s demand to “identify relevant management interventions to secure and improve the in situ and ex situ conservation of crop wild relatives”, as well as implementing the national CWR inventory strategy (bottom-up) outlined above, it is also necessary to implement a strategic approach to European CWR diversity conservation (top-down) that maximizes European priority CWR conservation irrespective of national political boundaries. The approach would be to draw on the existing CWR Catalogue for Europe and the Mediterranean (Kell et al., 2005) and develop a conservation strategy for the highest priority crop gene pools, described above, and build on the techniques developed at a global scale for CWR genetic diversity gap analysis within the FAO commissioned study “Establishment of a global network for the in situ conservation of crop wild relatives: status and needs' (Maxted and Kell, 2009); to produce a strategic approach to European CWR conservation.

Task 3.4. European generic CWR conservation strategy. Task leader: UoB. Involved partners: UoB, BIOVER, UNIPG, MTT and URJC

Drawing on the conservation evidence generated by the three preceding elements of the workpackage, a European generic CWR conservation strategy will be developed that may be applied to better conserve European CWR diversity and make that diversity available to breeders and other potential users. The strategy will identify and prioritize the relevant management interventions needed to secure and improve the in situ and ex situ conservation of European CWR diversity. The strategy will include systematic strategic recommendations for European CWR conservation and so will have an important policy role at Europe-wide, EU and national levels. Further, through the links established by other PGR Secure workpackages (WP 1, 2, 4 and 5), the strategy will for the first time explicitly link CWR conservation to sustainable exploitation and promote CWR use in a manner that is sustainable and best meets the breeders’ requirements. 

References

Kell, S.P., Knüpffer, H., Jury, S.L., Maxted, N. and Ford-Lloyd, B.V. (2005) Catalogue of Crop Wild Relatives for Europe and the Mediterranean. University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK. Available at: http://www.pgrforum.org/cwris/cwris.asp and on CD-ROM.

Maxted, N. and Kell, S. 2009. Establishment of a Network for the In Situ Conservation of Crop Wild Relatives: Status and Needs. Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy, pp.
211.