Any crops, or crop wild relatives, in the eastern Andes?

Well, of course there are. I mean, there must be. But we can’t be sure, at least not as far as this paper in BMC ecology is concerned. The abstract of Plant and animal endemism in the eastern Andean slope: Challenges to conservation tells us that “The Andes-Amazon basin of Peru and Bolivia is one of the most data-poor, biologically rich, and rapidly changing areas of the world” and goes on to say that the scientists “mapped ecological systems, endemic species concentrations, and irreplaceable areas with respect to national level protected areas”. It concludes:

We found that many endemic species and ecological systems are lacking national-level protection; a third of endemic species have distributions completely outside of national protected areas. Protected areas cover only 20% of areas of high endemism and 20% of irreplaceable areas. Almost 40% of the 91 ecological systems are in serious need of protection (=< 2% of their ranges protected).

Are any of the plants they studied wild relatives of crops? How about actual crops? Anyone able to comment?

7 Replies to “Any crops, or crop wild relatives, in the eastern Andes?”

  1. The authors may not have read the early literature which may not be on line. But nor are the plants! Both common bean and lima bean have wild relatives and landraces on the eastern slopes of the Andes in Peru, Bolivia and may go down to northern Argentina. Paul Gepts can provide the reference. There are probably more Phaseolus species grow there also. There are Salvia species that grow there.

  2. I am somewhat surprised by this question. To this group, it should be no problem enumerating any number of crop plants with wild relatives on the eastern Andean slope. It depends of course on the definition of “eastern Andean slope”, but here is a partial list:

    a) Phaseolus: 1) P. vulgaris; 2) P. lunatus and related wild P. species, such as P. augusti, P. bolivianus, and P. pachyrrhizoides
    b) Capsicum: 1) C. pubescens; 2) C. cardenasii, C. chacoense,…..
    c) Arachis
    d) Solanum: tomato and potato-related species
    e) Manihot
    f) Lupinus?
    g) Other Andean root crops

    I would like to hear from others. Thanks in advance.

  3. Is the question whether there are CWR on the eastern slopes of the Andes (we know the answer to that one), or whether any of the plants they looked at in the paper were CWR? I think Luigi meant the latter, right?

    Due to the many criteria that they used to select their focus taxa (described in their supplementary file #1), they were not considering most of the ones listed above by Giles and Paul. They do list Inga (although that is such a big genus that I have no idea whether the 16 species they say are endemic to their study region are closely related to pacay), and Passiflora, but I’m not sure that the other families or genera that they were considering have many CWR.

    Here is the list of plant groups they collected data for:
    Acanthaceae
    Anacardiaceae
    Aquifoliaceae
    Bruneliaceae
    Campanulaceae
    Chrysobalanaceae
    Cyathaceae
    Ericaceae
    Fabaceae – Inga
    Fabaceae- Mimosa
    Loasaceae
    Malpighiaceae
    Marcgraviaceae
    Onagraceae – Fuchsia
    Passifloraceae

    I didn’t see where individual genera were listed except for the few cases above where they were indicating that only one or two genera were considered out of a larger family. Am I missing something?

    BTW, I still refer regularly to Daniel Debouck’s nice review from a while back. Unfortunately, because it is in a book chapter, those who have forgotten how to visit libraries probably haven’t seen it. Definitely worth a visit to your library, and not only for this one excellent chapter:
    DEBOUCK, D. G., AND D. LIBREROS FERLA. 1995. Neotropical montane forests: a fragile home of genetic resources of wild relatives of new world crops. In S. P. Churchill, H. Balslev, E. Forero, and J. L. Luteyn [eds.], Biodiversity and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Forests, 561-577. New York Botanical Garden, New York.

    1. Eve had the right idea; did the authors consider crops or crop wild relatives in their assessment. Thanks for the list.

      And it seems that they did not.

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