ABOUT PROJECT

UNEP/GEF/Bioversity International Project

"In-situ conservation of crop wild relatives through enhanced information management and field application"

"In-situ conservation of crop wild relatives through enhanced information management and field application" is a UNEP/GEF co-financed project that addresses national and global needs to improve global food security through effective conservation and use of crop wild relatives. These wild relatives include the ancestors of modern crops and varieties and species related to them.

This project brings together five countries: Armenia, Bolivia, Madagascar, Sri Lanka and Uzbekis-tan, IPGRI and five other international conservation agencies: the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI), the United Nations Environment Program's World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food, BLE (before the German Centre for Documentation and Information in Agriculture (ZADI). Each of the countries has signifi-cant numbers of important and threatened crop wild relatives.

ОMAIN DIRECTION OF THE PROJECT:

• Develop National information systems for crop wild relatives, drawing together information from national sources and including aspects of species biology, ecology, conservation status, distribu-tion, crop production potential, local community uses and existing conservation actions.
• Develop an International Information System accessible through the World Wide Web to link global and national information resources and to allow determination of conservation status and needs for specific crop wild relatives.
• Explore and optimize procedures to link information on species distribution, spatial data and in-formation from eco-geographic surveys to make better conservation decisions for these species.
• Develop action plans for in-situ conservation of crop wild relatives involving local communities to as to combine security for the crop relatives with improved use and benefits for local people.
• Raise awareness within the countries of the importance of crop wild relatives and their value for improving agricultural production.

The outcomes of the project will be widely disseminated nationally and globally and successful strategies (best practices) will be readily transferable to other countries with significant populations of crop wild relatives.

In this way, global efforts to conserve biological diversity in general, and crop wild relatives in particular, will be accelerated and improved for the benefit of both the global community and local users.

MAIN OUTPUTS OF THE PROJECT:

• An on-line information system that will integrate the extensive but fragmented data on Crop Wild Relatives held by international and national institutions and also results of their eco-geographic surveys in in-situ conditions;
• Management Plans for in-situ conservation of Crop Wild Relatives in Protected Areas;
• Innovative analytical tools for decision-making on sustainable conservation and effective use of Crop Wild Relatives;
• National Training events on key areas such as information management, Red Listing proce-dures, participatory approaches and benefit sharing;
• Rational use of Crop Wild Relatives in breeding programs;
• • Heightened public awareness of the importance of Crop Wild Relatives.