COS 30-3 - Towards an integrative strategy for conservation of crop wild relatives (CWR) and wild-utilized plants (WUS) in Canada

Background/Question/Methods

In the face of global pressures of change and biodiversity loss, crop wild relatives (CWR; plants that are closely related to crop species and have potential to introduce beneficial traits through targeted breeding) and wild-utilized plant species (WUS) urgently require conservation attention. To advance conservation action and sustainable use of these plant genetic resources, we assembled a national inventory of Canada’s CWR and WUS, prioritizing taxa for conservation attention based on genetic distance to food crop species and on current conservation threats, and prioritizing geographic regions for conservation attention based on local species richness. Further, to assess baseline conservation status of Canada’s CWR and WUS in ex situ conservation systems, we created a meta-collection dataset comprised of germplasm accessions of Canadian CWR and WUS held in the network of Canadian and United States genebanks and in the national network of botanical gardens. We assessed the current conservation status at multiple taxonomic scales by determining the number of accessions and the genetic diversity represented in the ex situ meta-collection dataset. Genetic diversity was estimated using geographic diversity of conserved germplasm accessions as a proxy.

Results/Conclusions

Canada’s plant biodiversity includes 779 CWR and WUS taxa (658 distinct species), including 263 CWR taxa (222 distinct species) that are related to agricultural food crops of national and global importance such as blueberry and cranberry, apple, stone fruits, strawberry, sunflower, and saskatoon. 61 food crop CWR are prioritized for breeding potential, and 17 due to conservation threats. Although most food crop CWR are represented in collections (91%), the proportion of estimated within-species genetic diversity in Canada that is conserved ex situ is low (median = 5%; mean = 17%, sd = 26%). Poor representation of within-species diversity demands an integrative conservation strategy that emphasizes in situ protection, coordinating with diverse stakeholders, and especially focusing on wild-populations in Canada’s southern ecoregions where CWR and WUS diversity hotspots are at odds with concentrated conservation threats. To promote further ex situ and in situ conservation efforts, we present a conservation web application that enables users to generate local CWR and WUS taxon lists and to visualize species distributions and current conservation efforts for any of Canada’s CWR and WUS. We highlight how new tools such as this may advance further conservation by increasing the accessibility of data and engaging broader audiences.