Development of a prioritised checklist of crop wild relatives for conservation in Malawi

Crop wild relatives (CWR) have the potential to offer the much needed diversity for crop improvement, but their diversity is inadequately conserved. Lack of knowledge about their occurrence in Malawi, limits their systematic conservation and utilisation. Developing a CWR national inventory helps to define conservation priorities and actions. The objective of this study was to match checklists of crop genera and national flora, using their taxonomic and genetic relatedness information. This resulted into the first comprehensive annotated checklist of 446 CWR taxa in Malawi, which was prioritised by a set of criteria previously agreed with national stakeholders based on socio-economic importance of the related crop, potential use of the wild relative in crop improvement and threat status. The inventory comprises of 277 CWR taxa, identified as priority for conservation in Malawi; of which 78% were native.