Chives, mint and borage can be found whilst walking around the local woodlands.
However other plants like sea beet, wild cabbage and turnip or particular wild grasses are harder to find. These are the ancient relatives of modern food crops such as sugar beet, oil seed rape, and forage crops and they are very important.
According to Natural England these ancient plants are essential for future food supplies.
The Natural England report: Crop Wild Relatives: conservation for food security says that we will need to develop new, more resilient, food varieties in the 21st century and that the genes of crop wild relatives will be very important for this research.
This makes conservation efforts more pressing as some of the wild relative species are on the endangered list, such as Least lettuce (Lactuca saligna) and wild asparagus (Ornithogalum pyrenaicum).
Most people are aware that modern foods have evolved from a small proportion of plants bred for increasing yield however the extent of the loss of variety is a surprise. During the 20th century '75% of genetic diversity in crops was lost due to increased use of scientifically bred varieties', Natural England said.
This is a case for biodiversity that is easy to understand. Keeping a broad range of species allows maximum study for discovering which have better resilience to certain pests, diseases or climates.
The report says that '303 species, subspecies and varieties belonging to 15 families are wild relatives of significant agricultural and horticultural crops' and that 'the global value of crop varieties bred from Crop Wild Relatives was estimated in 1997 to be US$115 billion a year'.
Recent Comments