The potential for crop wild relatives (CWR) to contribute to crop improvement is growing due to improvements in information on species and their diversity, advancements in breeding tools, and the growing need for exotic genetic diversity to address compounding agronomic challenges. As wild plants, CWR are subject to a myriad of human caused threats to natural ecosystems, and their representation ex situ is often far from comprehensive. Ex situ conservation of many of these wild plants is also technically challenging, particularly in an environment of insufficient resources. Enhancing conservation, availability, and access to CWR requires a spectrum of action spanning basic and applied research on wild species to inform on-the-ground collecting, ex situ maintenance, and germplasm utilization. The development of effective information channels and productive partnerships between diverse organizations are essential to the success of these actions. Here we report on a spectrum of CWR activities involving broad partnerships, at three levels: a) the collaborative compilation and distribution on over 5 million occurrence data records on the CWR of major food crops, b) the analysis of conservation concerns and genetic resources potential of the CWR of potato, sweetpotato, and pigeonpea, and c) ongoing efforts to map the diversity and conservation concerns for CWR in the USA. Although differing in scales and depth of collaborations, the success of these initiatives are largely due to commonalities in research orientation, e.g., inclusiveness, offering clear incentives for involvement, and service providing to the crop science community.

1. Partnering on crop wild relative research at three scales:
commonalities for success
Colin K. Khoury, Stephanie L. Greene, and Nora P. Castañeda-Álvarez
Symposium: Conserving and Using Crop Wild Relatives: Partnering for Success
ASA, CSSA, SSSA Annual Meeting
16 November 2015
Minneapolis, USA

2. Crop wild relatives (CWR) everywhere

3. Crop wild relatives are valuable
Aluminium tolerance from
Oryza rufipogon
Salinity tolerance from
Solanum cheesmaniae
Western corn rootworm resistance
from Tripsacum dactyloides
Salinity tolerance from
Helianthus paradoxus
Publications- 2% of citations recorded prior to 1970, 13% in the 1970s, 15% in the 1980s, 32% in the 1990s and 38% 2000-2009 (n=234)
Disease resistance 39%, pest and disease resistance 17%, abiotic stress tolerance 13%, quality improvement 11% yield increase 10%, husbandry
improvement 6%, cytoplasmic male sterility and fertility restorers 4% (Maxted & Kell 2009)

4. Improvements in access to CWR taxonomic
and relatedness information
http://www.ars-grin.gov/~sbmljw/cgi-bin/taxcwr.pl?language=en
http://www.cwrdiversity.org/checklist/

5. Improvements in access to CWR distributions
information
https://plants.jstor.org/
http://www.gbif.org//
https://www.genesys-pgr.org/welcome

6. Improvements in methods to assess
comprehensiveness of genebank collections

7. Improvements in methods to assess potential
for use of CWR germplasm

8. http://www.ars-grin.gov/npgs/acc/acc_queries.html
http://www.planttreaty.org/
https://www.cbd.int/abs/
Improvements in tools and mechanisms
facilitating access to CWR germplasm (?)

9. 9
Increasing awareness of urgency to adapt
agriculture to a more challenging future

10. 2055
Increasing awareness of threats to CWR

11. 11
Wild Pecos sunflower
Helianthus paradoxusWild squash Cucurbita okeechobeensis subsp.
okeechobeensis
Scrub plum Prunus geniculataTexas wild rice Zizania texana
Increasing awareness of threats to CWR

12. CWR at the nexus
Crop Wild Relatives
Food and nutrition security
Agricultural development
Climate change adaptation
Biodiversity conservation
Ecosystem services
Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs)
Convention on
Biological Diversity (CBD)
Plant Treaty (ITPGRFA)
Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs)
Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs)
Plant Treaty (ITPGRFA)
Plant Treaty (ITPGRFA)

13. Challenges in basic CWR research
• Who?
• Gaps and errors in taxonomic and relatedness information
• Where?
• Gaps and errors in species distributions and genebank holdings
data
• What?
• Underdeveloped and rarely verified predictive characterization
• Very little genotypic and phenotypic information useful to assess
their potential as genetic resources
• How?
• Difficulties in conservation
• Limited access to germplasm
• Declining public research funding
• Uncertain management authority

14. Challenges in basic CWR research

15. Simpson CE (1992) Peanut Science. Photo from Valls JFM (2010) What specific changes in the current way genebanks and breeders do business and interact will be
necessary to increase use of Crop Wild Relatives? Presentation for ‘Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: The Need for Crop Wild Relatives’, Bellagio, 7-9
September 2010.
Challenges in using CWR

16. “It's a bit like crossing a house cat with a wildcat. You don't automatically get a big docile
pussycat. What you get is a lot of wildness that you probably don't want lying on your sofa.”
Challenges in using CWR

17. Crop Wild Relative Global Occurrence Database
Castañeda-Álvarez et al. 2016. in prep.
13.8 million records with validated coordinates

18. • 19.4 million total records
• 13.8 million records with validated coordinates
• Focused on 193 genera (most important food crops and
their related genera)
• Value-added
• Taxonomically adjusted/corrected
• Geographically cross-checked and geo-referenced
• Records from at least 96% of countries
• 98% of records can be openly shared
CWR Global Occurrence Database- summary

19. • Aim was to gather as much data as possible
• Major online biodiversity sources
• Major and minor herbaria (H)
• Accessible genebanks (G)
• Researchers (R)
• Published literature (L)
• Method- online download, directly contacting providers, herbarium visits,
open requests for data, presentations and posters
• Email, email, email, call
• Capitalized on partner contacts and personal relationships
• Data sharing options
• Collaboration opportunities – data repatriation, publications, training
• Resulting in data gathered from:
• 16 online resources
• Sent to us- 11 G, 33 H, 17 R
• 24 herbarium visits- 15,000 records digitized
• Data scooped from 5 literature sources
• Total- 90 direct providers; ca. 500 total providers
CWR Global Occurrence Database- data gathering

20. • Only 5 providers signed a data sharing agreement.
Only 2 of these did not allow further sharing of data
• 11 total providers requested that data be used only
within project, due to:
– Potential sensitivity of collection locations
– Conflict with other partnership agreements
– Data not yet published/threat to intellectual property
– Not specified
• By later stages of project, most of these providers
decided to permit further use of data
19.1 million records (98.4%) open distribution
306,781 records (1.6%) only for use of project
CWR Global Occurrence Database- data
arrangements

21. • Overall overwhelmingly positive about project and
sharing data
• The great majority contacted replied (80% responded)
• With few exceptions, all who responded and had data,
shared it
• Response aided by previous connections and personal
relationships. Although a few providers from closely
related organizations did not collaborate, despite
extensive attempts at engagement
• Response aided by mutually beneficial agreements (value
added data repatriation, publications, training)
• Recognition (attribution) important to providers
CWR Global Occurrence Database- lessons learned
about partnering on occurrence data

22. CWR data and gap analysis training
• PBI/Solanaceae
Source/NHM
(Solanum)
• ABCIC (African Oryza)
• CIP (Solanum, Ipomoea)
• CGN (Lactuca)
• UBC (Helianthus)
• EMBRAPA

23. • Value added data shared back to direct providers
(repatriation)
• Creative commons license (Non-commercial, Share-alike; now
moving to Attribution 4.0 International)
• Few comments on licensing; all were positive
• Data also provided to researchers/organizations by direct
request
• Data partly available now through website
(http://www.cwrdiversity.org/checklist/cwr-occurrences.php)
• Will soon provide entire dataset through website and GBIF
• Also providing data processing tools and code
(https://github.com/CIAT-DAPA/
cwr_occurrencesvalidation)
CWR Global Occurrence Database- data
distribution

24. CWR gap analyses for crop genepools
potato
sweetpotato
sunflower
pigeonpea

25. Gather
occurrence data
Make collecting
recommendations
Model
distributions
Process data
Determine gaps
in collections
Taxonomic
Geographic
Ecological
Choose species
or area
81 crop genepools
1079 crop wild relative
taxa (close relatives)
Crop wild relative gap analysis method

26. Distributions of the CWR of pigeonpea
Khoury et al. 2015. Biological Conservation 184: 259-270.

27. Collecting priorities for the CWR of pigeonpea
Khoury et al. 2015. Biological Conservation 184: 259-270.

28. Potential adaptive traits in CWR of pigeonpea
Khoury et al. 2015. Biological Conservation 184: 259-270.

29. Targeted proposed collecting for adaptive traits for
the CWR of pigeonpea
Potential distributions of selected CWR in A) south Asia and B) Australia that are not currently represented in germplasm collections and which occur in regions with <500 mm annual precipitation.
Khoury et al. 2015. Biological Conservation 184: 259-270.

30. Gap analyses for targeted crop genepools
Kantar et al. 2015. Front. Plant Sci. 6: 841.
Castañeda-Álvarez et al. 2015. PLoS One 10(4): e0122599. Khoury et al. 2015. Biol. Conserv. 184: 259-270.
Khoury et al. 2015. Front. Plant Sci. 6: 251.Cobben et al. 2015. Plant Gen. Res. 13(2): 153-161.

31. CWR gap analyses at the national level

32. Inventory of CWR of the USA
• Inventory includes a wide range of
utilized and potentially useful taxa,
including both native and naturalized
species occurring in the USA
• List peer reviewed by US researchers,
curators, breeders
• Inventory contains over 4,600 taxa
• CWR related to major crops
prioritized, along with US iconic wild
crops (e.g. sugar maple, wild rice,
pecan)
• ca. 250 closely related, native taxa
related to 38 crops = highest priority Phaseolus angustissimus. SEINet
Khoury et al. 2013. Crop Science 53(4): 1496.

33. raspberry 8
Ribes 27
squash 3
star anise 1
strawberry 8
sugar maple 3
sunflower 35
sweet potato 9
tepary bean 2
vanilla 2
walnut 5
wild rice 5
Associated
crop
Number
of CWR
apricot 2
beet 3
blackberry 36
blueberry 17
cherry 2
chestnut 3
chives 1
cotton 3
cranberry 2
fig 1
garlic 1
grape 28
guava 1
hazelnut 3
lettuce 9
lingonberry 3
maize 3
mate 5
peach 10
pecan 9
pepper 1
persimmon 2
pistachio 1
plum 17
potato 1
ramp 1
Highest priority food CWR of the USA
Khoury et al. 2013. Crop Science 53(4): 1496.

34. USA CWR distributions

35. 0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
83.5%
8.4%
5.5% 2.6%
USA CWR gap analysis priorities

36. • Collaborations with genebanks, herbaria, researchers, and
expert evaluators have overall been overwhelmingly positive,
with the great majority very willing to contribute to the
projects however they can. Investing in establishing as well as
using pre-established personal relationships with partners
probably improved response
• Formal data sharing agreement was very rarely used, 98% of
occurrence data can be shared with the global community, and
open use license (attribution only) seems acceptable.
Recognition (attribution) is important
• The CWR data community remains quite some distance from
the level of data quality and standardization required to trust
in, share, and use taxonomic and occurrence data quickly and
easily, although we are making progress
Thoughts and considerations on partnerships 1

37. • Collaborations involving invested researchers with a
wide diversity of skills (taxonomy, distributions,
conservation, breeding) were necessary to do our
research on CWR, especially when using big datasets
• Iterative evaluations of data and results by collaborators
were essential
• Mutually beneficial arrangements (publications, etc.)
were highly desired, and resulted in best products
• Open access, open sharing (data, knowledge, tools) is
the norm, is appreciated, and becoming expected
• Media appreciates proactivity, or at least willingness, to
communicate about CWR
Thoughts and considerations on partnerships 2