Currently 75% of the world’s food is generated from only twelve plant species and since the 1900s, 75% of plant genetic diversity has been lost as farmers worldwide have replaced their diverse set of local varieties and landraces with genetically uniform, high-yielding varieties. An important consequence of the crop domestication is that the current gene pool is relatively narrow for most crops, with little variation for traits related to crop resilience and nutritional value. This modern approach has also reduced the level of biodiversity routinely used by breeding programmes, this narrows the options for crop improvement at a time when there is an increasing demand for stress resilient crops.
Crop diversification and improved varieties are urgently required to support regenerative farming and an agroecological transition towards maintaining and stabilising yields with reduced agrochemical inputs and under increasingly volatile climates. Exploiting positive attributes of Crop Wild Relatives (CWRs) in crop breeding has the potential to make European agriculture more resilient and nutritionally valuable by exploiting a larger genetic pool linked to desirable traits.
Such a transition results in more diverse, sustainable, and nutritious food, in line with the EU Green Deal policy and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). While introducing genetic material from CWRs offers great potential to enhance these traits, the process has traditionally been slow and labour-intensive. Recent advances in speed breeding, high-throughput phenotyping and genotyping, now make it more feasible to incorporate CWRs into breeding programs. To effectively exploit the potential of CWRs requires programmes such as COUSIN to ensure there is sufficient relevant knowledge about CWRs, their conservation is ensured, and access to both the genetic material and associated data is maintained.
COUSIN is developing a roadmap, guided by the Crop Readiness Levels, to use CWRs in breeding climate-resilient, nutritious crops. It aims to boost agro-biodiversity and show CWRs' value in breeding for resilient and quality traits.
COUSIN will:
• IDENTIFY pathways to use CWRs to strengthen sustainable agriculture.
• RECOGNISE preferred areas for the conservation and monitoring of the priority CWR species in Europe and implement their trans situ conservation.
• DETERMINE stakeholder-demanded characteristics of CWRs.
• IMPLEMENT stakeholder-demanded characteristics of CWRs into breeding activities.
• PROVIDE information about CWRs in an accessible format to stakeholders.
• TRAIN and raise awareness of the value of CWRs for value chain actors and the society.
