To accomplish our goals, we must act soon, and we must work together. We endorse an ambitious regional initiative built on partnerships between plant conservation, land management, agricultural science, and botanical education and outreach organizations to take collective action to 1) understand and document North America’s crop wild relatives and wild utilized plants, 2) collect and conserve their diversity, 3) make their diversity accessible for plant breeding, research, and education, 4) protect threatened species in their natural habitats, and 5) raise public awareness of their value and the threats to their persistence. Through our collective network we endorse these five priorities for strategic action, which will be necessary to the successful conservation, use, and celebration of our crop wild relatives and wild utilized plants.
This presentation is from the Celebrating Crop Diversity: Connecting Agriculture, Public Gardens, and Science Symposium that took place on April 2-4, 2019, in Des Moines, Iowa.
