Conservation Planning for Crop Wild Relative Diversity

Crop wild relative (CWR) diversity is increasingly threatened because of human mismanagement of the environment, whether it is species existence per se or the genetic diversity being reduced or shifting in response to environmental changes. Maxted and Kell recognize three distinct approaches on the basis of geographic scale: individual, national and global approach. For both the national and global approaches, it would be desirable to include all CWR diversity present. The initial step in the development of a conservation strategy is to generate a CWR checklist which in turn consists of four distinct types of CWR databases. Conservation planning for CWR diversity is commonly associated with gap analysis which will indicate how well current conservation measures represent the actual or predictive diversity of the target taxa and and gaps are identified. Finally, it is concluded that involving end users in the discussion of conservation priorities will improve CWR conservation.