The importance of conserving crop wild relatives in preparing agriculture for climate change

Climate change is widely acknowledged to have severe implications for global food production and therefore food security. Utilising crop wild relatives (CWR) to help build resilience in domesticated crops is seen as part of the solution assuming that important genetic traits can be transferred to domesticated crops and that the resulting improved crop varieties can be farmed on a sufficiently large scale. CWR can be exploited as a valuable source of alleles related to adaptive traits to counter abiotic and biotic stresses resulting from climate change, and to improve yield and nutrition. This review aims to critically analyse the degree to which CWR have been utilised by crop breeders and researchers and will draw conclusions about the importance of CWR in preparing agriculture for climate change. Examples for CWR-derived improved varieties of nine major crops and at different plant development stages are presented. However, working with CWR is often seen as ‘marginal’. It is problematic due to the complex processes involved and length of time needed for traditional crop breeding, shortage of funds, the limited availability of CWR germplasm, overcoming risk aversion among farmers, and a reluctance by the wider agricultural community to appreciate the scale of the problem and to embrace the potential benefits that could derive from using CWR in crop breeding. Given the observed lack of availability the observed lack of availability of CWR in accessible germplasm collections, additional resources must be directed towards ensuring CWR are protected in situ and conserved ex situ so they can be made available to researchers.