Broadening the Base, Narrowing the Task: Prioritizing Crop Wild Relative Taxa for Conservation Action

A surge in conservation planning for crop wild relatives since the turn of the century has resulted in a wide range of different crop wild relative prioritization criteria and methods being applied. This paper reviews those criteria and methods and presents a harmonized, logical, and pragmatic means of assigning priority status to crop wild relative taxa on the basis of three main criteria: (i) the socioeconomic value of crops, (ii) the relative potential value of the wild relatives of socioeconomically valuable crops for variety improvement, and (iii) the relative threat status of the wild relatives of socioeconomically valuable crops.