Scientists identify list of wild plants needed to protect food crops

Scientists have put together an international inventory of wild plants that must be saved to protect the genetic health of important food crops. Unfortunately the highest concentrations of these plants are found in conflict zones in the Middle East.

A major hotspot for these "crop wild relatives" is in the Fertile Crescent where human agriculture is thought to have started. But the crescent tracks through Palestine, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Iran, researchers from the University of Birmingham will say today at the annual Festival of Science, which this year takes place at the university.

The inventory lists 173 crops of interest and their 1,667 priority wild relatives. It also details why these wild plants are so important for crop health and higher yields.

These wild relatives carry genes that give traits such as drought resistance, better plant-disease survival and resistance to low temperatures. These traits can be bred into existing crop plants to strengthen their genetic health.

They may also have traits that can help crops keep up with damaging effects of climate change and all that it might bring. This includes new types of insect pests and diseases.

But it has become difficult to take action to protect them, because of conflicts in the region. The highest concentration of wild plants per unit of area is found in Syria and Lebanon, the researcher say.

Changed land use is also having a major impact, with 12 per cent of the inventory threatened with extinction, lead investigator Dr Nigel Maxted of the university’s school of biosciences will say.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation is now leading an initiative supported by the Birmingham researchers to build a conservation plan to keep the plants in situ. It also includes a contingency plan, however, with plant material being put into "gene banks" as a backup against extinction.

Similar research into China’s rich wild plant diversity will also be presented at the meeting. It will show 871 wild plant species with potential to improve 28 important food crops are native to China.

The study by scientists at Birmingham’s school of biosciences found 42 per cent of the plant species occur nowhere else in the world, but also that at least 17 per cent are threatened with extinction.