Locally based crop plant conservation

Abstract

Conservation of cultivated plants or domesticated animals follows the same principles and concepts for naturally occurring biological resources as outlined elsewhere in this book. This chapter focuses on crop plants, where a broad definition of a crop plant is applied. That is, we include plants grown under human cultivation and those exploited in natural stands, but under minimal management by humans. The latter includes those non-cultivated plants that are exploited extensively, such as for the extractive harvest of fruits, nuts and sap from trees or the destructive harvest of trees for timber. The primary distinction in methods for the conservation of crop plants from other biodiversity is that humans usually have a much stronger and essential role in conservation of crop plants. For example, a habitat reserve may be established for conservation of wild species, but once established there is minimal human activity in maintaining the in situ reserve. For cultivated crop plants the habitat is the farming unit itself or, occasionally, the local community, and humans are involved actively with the planting and harvest of each crop and have direct control of the fate of the crop and hence its biological diversity. Likewise, for natural stands of non-cultivated crop plants, humans have control over the intensity and frequency of harvest and, to some extent, regeneration of new plants.