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Nordic Authorities Need to Take Responsibility for Protecting Crop Wild Relatives for Future Generations

Date: 2019.10.16

Today, NordGen is publishing the debate article below:

About 12 000 years ago, our ancestors settled as resident farmers. As they looked around, they found wild plants with usable qualities, such as grasses with extra-large seeds, and started to cultivate them. Since then, humans have selected and crossed plants with desirable traits, which has resulted in crops that are nutritious, high-yielding and easy to harvest and process. As a result, we can feed the billions of people populating the world today.

If we now were to look at that grass, chosen by our ancestors many thousand years ago, it would perhaps not seem very impressive in comparison to a modern ear of wheat. But these crop wild relatives, as they are called, carry many important traits not present in modern crop varieties. Such traits may enhance drought tolerance and nutritional value or yield resistance or even immunity to a new disease. In fact, crop wild relatives are crucial if we are to handle future challenges concerning food security, sustainable agriculture and adapting our crops to new challenges caused by climate change.

Today, crop wild relatives have very limited protection. Changes in land use, a new residential area, or changed water flows could cause these natural resources, so precious for our future food supply, to be lost forever.

But much can be done to save the crop wild relatives. In the new report “Nordic Crop Wild Relative Conservation” we provide a palette of examples of those measures. Responsible authorities and policy makers can learn about the plant species that are most important to save, and where they grow. We have also developed a joint Nordic toolkit, which can be useful in national conservation planning and implementation.

In the report, we give the following main recommendations to the Nordic countries, with the purpose of saving threatened crop wild relatives:

Develop national strategies for a sustainable conservation and use of Crop Wild Relatives in their natural habitats (in situ) and in gene banks (ex situ).

At the national level, develop the policy instruments needed to facilitate conservation and sustainable use of crop wild relatives, involving all relevant stakeholders.

Form a network of complementary in situ conservation sites across the Nordic region, covering different habitats and climates zones and including top priority crop wild relatives.

Encourage research, infrastructure development and Nordic cooperation to further crop wild relative conservation and sustainable use.

The preparatory work is done. Now, the Nordic countries need to take their responsibility and go from theory to practice. Saving the crop wild relatives is a large and important task, crucial for future generations. We are ready to assist.

Signed by

Heli Fitzgerald, Finnish Museum of Natural History, LUOMUS, University of Helsinki

Jens Weibull, Swedish Board of Agriculture

Kristina Bjureke, UiO Natural History Museum in Oslo, University of Oslo

Dag Endresen, UiO Natural History Museum in Oslo, University of Oslo

Jenny Hagenblad, Linköping University

Marko Hyvärinen, Finnish Museum of Natural History, LUOMUS, University of Helsinki

Elina Kiviharju, National program for genetic resources, Natural Resources Institute Finland

Morten Rasmussen, Norwegian Genetic Resource Centre, Norwegian Institute of Bio-economy Research

Hjörtur Þorbjörnsson, Reykjavík Botanic Garden, Iceland

Anna Palmé, Nordic Genetic Resource Centre (NordGen)