The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) invests £78m (€80m) in plant and crop research at universities and institutes across the UK, sometimes in the form of international partnerships. They have a pamphlet out called The Bioscience Behind Secure Harvests, highlighting “key BBSRC-supported research into achieving global food security.” There’s a lot on breeding, in particular as a way of adapting to climate change, and a section on “Harnessing natural diversity.” ((Actually that turns out to be mainly about Arabidopsis.)) There are even a couple of — albeit brief — references to the use of wild relatives in wheat breeding. But nothing at all on the conservation side of things. I guess the BBSRC figures that funding the long-term availability of the raw materials of all this breeding it is supporting is someone else’s problem.
@Footnote 1. I also think we should start eating Arabidopsis. Knowing so much about it, it should be fairly easy to domesticate. Since the genome is so small, ex situ conservation should be relatively cheap as well.