Future Threats and Opportunities Facing Crop Wild Relatives and Landrace Diversity

Crop wild relatives and landraces possess novel alleles for biotic and abiotic stress resistance which can be used to develop varieties with superior traits. They can survive in different agro-environmental conditions as they have not undergone through genetic bottlenecks of domestication. They have broad genetic base with a wide range of allele diversity, thus contributing towards food safety and livelihood security. Due to natural calamities and anthropogenic activities, CWR and landraces are under threat of the risk of extinction as a result of deforestation, genetic erosion, industrialized agriculture, dryland destruction and desertification, urbanization and climate change. Thus, a coordinated global approach is needed for conservation of CWR and landraces as they play a major role in providing ecosystem services which are beneficial to humans. It is also necessary to screen novel genes in both wild plants that can be used in crop improvement programmes and threatened wild plants and landraces which need to be conserved. Plant genetic resources can be conserved either in situ or ex situ. Also, CWR and landraces have been utilized in crop improvement programmes through modern approaches like tissue culture, genetic engineering, AB-QTL and alien transfer of genes from wild relatives to chromosomes.