China’s crop wild relatives: Diversity for agriculture and food security

The potentially devastating impacts of climate change on crop production and food security are now widely acknowledged. An important component of efforts to mitigate these impacts is the production of new varieties of crops which will be able to thrive in more extreme and changeable environmental conditions. There is therefore an urgent need to find new sources of genetic diversity for crop improvement. Wild plant species closely related to crops (crop wild relatives) contain vital sources of such genes. The flora of China comprises more than 20,000 native higher plant species, a proportion of which have known or potential value as gene donors for crop improvement. In this paper authors present a methodology for creating a checklist of, and prioritizing China’s crop wild relatives, and reveal that 871 native species are related to crops that are of particularly high socio-economic importance in China. They provide recommendations for developing a systematic and comprehensive national CWR conservation strategy for China, highlighting the challenges and requirements of taking the strategy forward to the implementation phase.