Stephanie Greene (USDA), invites contributions to an upcoming special issue of the journal Crop Science on Crop Wild Relatives.

The use of crop wild relatives (CWR) to develop stress resistant crops has emerged as an important strategy for food security in a world confronted by climate change, dwindling resources and a burgeoning population. Harnessing the beneficial traits in wild species presents unique challenges. In a special issue of Crop Science, we would like to explore the question, “are we getting better at using wild species in light of new tools?” We invite scientists to answer our question by submitting a title and short abstract (250 words) by May 1, 2016, on one of the following themes:

Collecting, conserving and making wild germplasm available

• Prioritizing collection and conservation (i.e. gap analyses)
• Conservation methods/challenges of wild germplasm
• Managing and sharing pre-bred lines and genetic stocks

Mining germplasm collections

• Predictive characterization (i.e. Focused Identification of Germplasm Strategy (FIGS))
• Strategies to identify the most prominent parents
• Large-scale characterization of germplasm collections (high-throughput genotyping, phenotyping etc.)

Using wild diversity for crop improvement

• Overcoming the challenges of introgression
• Developing and/or domesticating wild species for agricultural use
• Stories of success- impactful use of wild species
• Use of wild species in the dawning age of genome editing

Send abstracts to stephanie.greene@ars.usda.gov. After reviewing abstracts, the Wild Species Special Issues steering committee will invite twelve authors to write manuscripts. Authors do not need to be a member of the Crop Science Society of America. Invited manuscripts will be 7000-8000 words and due by October 1, 2016. Manuscripts will be published in a Crop Science Special Issue in 2017, pending standard Crop Science review.