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Conservation tools

Nordic conservation tools

"The Nordic Crop Wild Relative (CWR) checklist" is a result from a joint Nordic project, “Ecosystem services: Genetic resources and crop wild relatives” (2015-2016) funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen). It contains almost 3.000 different CWR. Out of this list, 114 species have been selected to a list of prioritized species. In it, the relatedness to crops (genepool concept) are listed. The distribution data includes indigenous, naturalized foreign or a temporary foreign categories of the priority taxa in each Nordic country.

International Conservation Tools

The efforts of conserving CWR are done worldwide meaning that there are also international tools that can be helpful. The Interactive Toolkit for Crop Wild Relative Conservation Planning is designed to provide guidance to plan and implement active in situ and ex situ conservation of CWR at national level.

On a European level, the conservation of CWR is also being targeted for example within the project PGR Secure. The aim of PGR Secure is to research novel characterization techniques and conservation strategies for European crop wild relative and landrace diversity, and further, to enhance crop improvement by breeders, as a means of underpinning European food security in the face of climate change.