Our friend Colin Khoury and his associates have a paper out in Crop Science on inventorying crop wild relatives in the US. The press release that goes with it is getting picked up. The bottom line is easy to summarize, and Colin does so in the abstract:
We prioritize 821 taxa from 69 genera primarily related to major food crops, particularly the approximately 285 native taxa from 30 genera that are most closely related to such crops. Both the urgent collection for ex situ conservation and the management of such taxa in protected areas are warranted, necessitating partnerships between concerned organizations, aligned with regional and global initiatives to conserve and provide access to CWR diversity.
But where to start with all that collecting and in situ work? Well, here’s a little peek at the next phase of Colin’s work, which will answer that question. He’ll be modelling the distribution of the priority species using the GIS resources at CIAT, and mapping areas of high species diversity, and also areas which are under-represented in conservation efforts (gaps). Using just a portion of the data, and therefore yielding only very preliminary results, this is the sort of thing that comes out:
We look forward to the final results in due course. Good luck, Colin, and thanks for the sneak preview.