China’s new National Strategy for Plant Conservation has just been launched, and Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) has a write-up about it. An introduction to the strategy is also available. Agricultural biodiversity gets quite a high profile, which is great, and unusual for such exercises. Here’s a few quotes to give you the flavour:
China is home to some of the world’s most important crop, medicinal and ornamental species, such as tea, rice, soy beans, ginseng, magnolias, camellias & peaches.
China is … keen to investigate novel methods of ‘eco-agriculture’, in a bid to introduce more sustainable land management practices to a country which is still largely agricultural.
The system known as the “3R Model†(Resources, Research, and Resolution) has recently produced a unique golden-fleshed kiwi fruit, bred from wild native kiwi vines that were conserved by the project.
A national Chinese seed bank (containing 340,000 accessions) and a network of regional seed banks ensures the long-term conservation of the genes of important crops, such as rice and soya beans.
Over 11,000 species are used in traditional Chinese medicine. Of the 600 plant species that are regularly used, sustainable cultivation systems have been developed for 200 species, thereby preventing their unsustainable harvesting from the wild.
One thing I didn’t understand, though. There’s a picture of a cultivated field in the introduction to the strategy, and also in the BGCI piece, with the following caption:
Fields of cultivated ‘wild’ barley, found only in the Chinese Himalayas, demonstrate the importance of local and ethnic crop varieties.
No doubt there are wild species of Hordeum in the Chinese Himalayas. But what does it mean to say that they are cultivated? Similarly, there is cultivated barley there. But what does it mean to say that it is “wild”?