Botanic Gardens Are Important Contributors to Crop Wild Relative Preservation

ABSTRACTHumans rely on crop wild relatives (CWRs) for sustainable agriculture and food security through augmentation of crop yield, disease resistance, and climatic tolerance, among other important traits. Many CWRs are underrepresented in crop gene banks. With at least one‐third of known plant species maintained in botanic garden living collections, the botanic garden community serves as an important global ex situ network that supports plant conservation and research around the world. We sought to characterize botanic garden holdings of CWRs and demonstrate capacity for cross‐sector coordination in support of CWR ex situ preservation. To do this, Botanic Gardens Conservation International US (BGCI‐US), in partnership with the United States Botanic Garden, used the BGCI PlantSearch database to conduct an ex situ survey of CWRs maintained in botanic gardens. We found 28.6% of global priority CWR taxa and 75.4% of US priority CWR taxa represented in botanic gardens. By comparing with priority CWR holdings in crop gene banks, botanic gardens maintain 22 global priority and 108 US priority CWR taxa not reported by crop gene banks. A combination of crop gene bank and botanic garden holdings results in broader taxonomic coverage. Looking more closely at 10 US priority CWR species, findings demonstrate that botanic gardens have the capacity to fill critical CWRs gaps in crop gene bank collections, and botanic gardens maintain samples from wild populations not represented in crop gene banks. We call on the crop gene bank and botanic garden communities to use an integrated collections development approach for further coordination, complementarity, and duplication of ex situ CWR plant genetic resources.