Collecting all the native species in the United States, as well as developing restoration techniques and growing huge amounts of seed will take about 10 years and cost about $500 million, Dr. Havens said — a cost that she argues is well worth it.
That will include a nice batch of crop wild relatives… Incidentally, that $500 million is about twice the value of the endowment that is sometimes mentioned as being necessary to ensure long-term ex situ conservation of crop diversity.
What crop relatives are you referring to? Aren’t the only crops descended from native U.S. plants pretty much just sunflower and blueberry?
One important crop you forget is tobacco, although I’m not particularly fond is this plant. Also, the extended family of crop plants is bigger than just the direct ancestors. For instance, Phaseolus polystachios occurs only in the US, a close relative of common beans.
Depends a little how you interpret “relative”, but there are plenty of other crops with congenerics which are native to the US, eg see this.
Good points – though if most of those relatives are as distant from their crops as the Solanaceous ones are (which I’m more familiar with, and generally aren’t co-generic), I’d be skeptical they’d be any use for breeding, but it would be a very cool resource for genetic and ecological studies, let alone conservation.
Solanum fendleri, a wild potato, has been evaluated for nematode resistance, and I do not see why it would not be used in potato breeding. I think they were occasionally eaten, and perhaps even cultivated in the past.
Topinambur (Jerusalem artichoke), Helianthus tuberosus is another all-American crop.