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National inventories of crop wild relatives and wild harvested plants: case-study for Portugal

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Abstract

Crop wild relatives (CWR) and wild harvested plant species (WHP) constitute an important element of a nation’s plant genetic resources (PGR) available for utilisation. Although their natural populations are threatened like other wild species by habitat lost and fragmentation, little attention has generally been paid to their systematic conservation. The development of checklists and inventories is considered by the convention on biological diversity (CBD) and the global strategy for plant conservation (GSPC) as the first step in any national strategy for conservation and sustainable use of plant diversity. Methodological approaches to the development of a national inventory of wild PGR are discussed in the light of a case-study for the CWR and WHP growing in mainland Portugal. The resultant inventory comprises 2319 taxa, of which 97.5% are CWR, 21.4% are WHP and 19.0% are both CWR and WHP. Approximately 6.1% are endemic to mainland Portugal; 24.1% occur in 1 to 4 Portuguese administrative regions; 15.6% are threatened, but only 5.9% are covered by legislative protection. Taxonomic misalignments and the dispersed nature of biological literature were the major impediments to the production of the national inventory, but once the inventory was established it has proven to be a powerful tool in conservation management.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank to Ms. Shelagh Kell (University of Birmingham, UK) for helping with the CWR taxa list for Portugal extracted from the PGR Forum Crop Wild Relative Catalogue for Europe and the Mediterranean; to Mr. Pedro Ivo Arriegas (Instituto da Conservação da Natureza, Portugal), Ms. Fátima Costa (Jardim Botânico, Museu Nacional de História Natural, Portugal), Dr. Carlos Aguiar (Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Portugal), Mr. António Flôr (Parque Natural da Serra de Aire e Candeeiros, Portugal), Dr. Paula Gonçalves (Reserva Natural da Serra da Malcata, Portugal), Mr. João Almeida (Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal), Mr. Paul Bordoni (IPGRI, Italy), Eng. Cláudia Melo, Dr. Ana Maria Carvalho (Escola Superior Agrária de Bragança, Portugal), and Dr. Orlanda Póvoa (Escola Superior Agrária de Elvas, Portugal) for providing valuable information. Also thanks to the Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE, Portugal), and Mr. Rui Pereira (Gabinete de Planeamento e Política Agro-Alimentar, Ministério da Agricultura, Portugal) for their assistance. Finally, thanks to Ms. Maria Scholten (University of Birmingham, UK), Mr. Eliseu Bettencourt (Estação Agronómica Nacional Portugal), and Ms. Sonia Dias (IPGRI, Italy) for their useful comments and discussions. J. Magos Brehm is funded by the fellowship SFRH/BD/16508/2004 from the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK

    Joana Magos Brehm, Nigel Maxted & Brian V. Ford-Lloyd

  2. Museu Nacional de História Natural, Jardim Botânico, Universidade de Lisboa, R. Escola Politécnica 58, Lisboa, 1250-102, Portugal

    Joana Magos Brehm & Maria Amélia Martins-Loução

  3. Centro de Ecologia e Biologia Vegetal, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande C2. Piso 4, Lisboa, 1749-016, Portugal

    Maria Amélia Martins-Loução

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  1. Joana Magos Brehm
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  2. Nigel Maxted
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  3. Brian V. Ford-Lloyd
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  4. Maria Amélia Martins-Loução
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Correspondence to Joana Magos Brehm.

Appendices

Appendix 1

  Genebanks and online databases surveyed
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Appendix 2

  CWR and WHP endemic taxa of mainland Portugal
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Magos Brehm, J., Maxted, N., Ford-Lloyd, B.V. et al. National inventories of crop wild relatives and wild harvested plants: case-study for Portugal. Genet Resour Crop Evol 55, 779–796 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10722-007-9283-9

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