Crop Wild Relatives in India: Inventorization, Prioritization and Conservation#

Identified as a critical component for food and nutritional security and environmental sustainability in the current century, crop wild relatives (CWR) warrant species-level prioritization and meaningful germplasm conservation. A rough-and-ready approach placing all other species of a crop genus as CWR is unacceptable, as it would lead to the listing of many unrelated species, also conversely, in some crops, the search has gone beyond the crop genera. Initially, based on overall closeness with the crop as well as their potential for use, a total of 861 Indian CWR taxa (769 species) were prioritized for 171 ICAR-mandated crops falling under 14 crop groups. Further prioritization was made on shortlisted taxa, based on the economic importance of crops per se, level of closeness to crops (cytogenetically/morphologically/molecularly), possessing traits of breeders’ interest, or already under wide-hybridization programme, and the extent of distribution/threat. This resulted in the identification of 292 taxa (257 species) belonging to 85 crops. These high-priority taxa were further analyzed for conservation gaps, if any. Of 292 taxa, only 167 were conserved in the National Genebank. While 28 taxa were represented with only one accession and 81 with <10 accessions, only 40 were with a fair number of accessions (≥50); however, they too lacked representative samples from across a geographical and ecological range. This communication highlights the constraints involved in the process including insufficient information on threat status, gap areas for future collection, and thrust areas.