National Strategy for the Conservation of Crop Wild Relatives of Spain

In the past few years, many studies have reported the importance of Crop Wild Relatives (CWRs) and the need to preserve them, suggesting different criteria for their selection and protocols for their conservation. The relevance of CWRs essentially responds to the need to guarantee food security through the provision of a wide gene pool of potential gene donors. This is especially important considering that the predicted changes in temperature and precipitation patterns worldwide in a climate change context will affect crop production and quality. In many areas, strong variations in rainfall and temperatures are already being observed; so farmers are presently trying to adapt their crops to the changing environment. As CWRs have already been used and proved to be useful in crop breeding increasing knowledge on them and improving their conservation is becoming urgent nowadays. This document presents the report for National Strategy for the conservation of Spain’s CWRs.