The Harlan and de Wet

Crop Wild Relative inventory

Prioritizing crop wild relative species for collection and conservation is essential, given the limited resources available for these activities. CWR may be prioritized based on the economic importance of the crop to which they are related, the level of threat to a given CWR population or species, as well as the potential for CWR utilization.


Two major systems exist for determining the ease by which CWR species can be used in breeding efforts. The first is the Harlan and de Wet (1971) genepool concept, which divides CWR species into primary, secondary and tertiary genepools based on how easy it is to use them in breeding (the primary and secondary genepools being the easiest to use). However, the Harlan and de Wet genepool concept has not been applied to all crops, and in these cases the taxonomic classifications of the crop genus can be used as a proxy for relative crossability, as in the taxon group concept (Maxted et al. 2006).


The Harlan and de Wet Crop Wild Relative Inventory presented here uses both genepool concepts as well as documentation of CWR species that have been successfully used in breeding in the past to provide a priority list of 1400 CWR species, along with key ancillary data such as their regional and national occurrence, seed storage behavior and herbaria housing major collections of CWR.

Loader
Preparing your export
Ready
Your export is ready!