Title
Crop wild relatives of the United States require urgent conservation action
Date Issued
01 December 2020
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Khoury C.K.
Carver D.
Greene S.L.
Williams K.A.
Achicanoy H.A.
Schori M.
Wiersema J.H.
Frances A.
Publisher(s)
National Academy of Sciences
Abstract
The contributions of crop wild relatives (CWR) to food security depend on their conservation and accessibility for use. The United States contains a diverse native flora of CWR, including those of important cereal, fruit, nut, oil, pulse, root and tuber, and vegetable crops, which may be threatened in their natural habitats and underrepresented in plant conservation repositories. To determine conservation priorities for these plants, we developed a national inventory, compiled occurrence information, modeled potential distributions, and conducted threat assessments and conservation gap analyses for 600 native taxa. We found that 7.1% of the taxa may be critically endangered in their natural habitats, 50% may be endangered, and 28% may be vulnerable. We categorized 58.8% of the taxa as of urgent priority for further action, 37% as high priority, and 4.2% as medium priority. Major ex situ conservation gaps were identified for 93.3% of the wild relatives (categorized as urgent or high priority), with 83 taxa absent from conservation repositories, while 93.1% of the plants were equivalently prioritized for further habitat protection. Various taxonomic richness hotspots across the US represent focal regions for further conservation action. Related needs include facilitating greater access to and characterization of these cultural-genetic-natural resources and raising public awareness of their existence, value, and plight.
Start page
33351
End page
33357
Volume
117
Issue
52
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Conservación de la Biodiversidad Agricultura
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85099171511
PubMed ID
Source
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
ISSN of the container
00278424
Sponsor(s)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. We thank the botanists, taxonomists, plant collectors, geospatial scientists, and genetic resource professionals who compiled and made available through open-access repositories the occurrence and ecogeographic information used in this analysis. We also thank D. Amariles, S. Diulgheroff, A. Meyer, M. Obreza, S. Sotelo, and M. R. White for data retrieval support; J. Sullivan for map template inputs; J. Bamberg, D. G. Debouck, L. J. Grauke, C. Heinitz, and L. Marek for evaluation of results; and H. Dempewolf, A. Jarvis, and A. Novy for inputs to the text. C.K.K. was supported by USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (Grant 2019-67012-29733/Project Accession 1019405). The USDA is an equal opportunity employer and provider.
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus