A Road Map for Conservation, Use, and Public Engagement around North America’s Crop Wild Relatives and Wild Utilized Plants

Crop wild relatives—the plant species closely related to agricultural crops—are valuable genetic resources used by plant breeders to increase pest and disease resistance, stress tolerance, nutritional profile, and other traits critical to productivity, quality, and sustainability. Wild utilized plants provide food and a variety of other ecosystem and cultural services to people. North America harbors a rich native flora that includes wild relatives of important food, fiber, industrial, feed and forage, medicinal, and ornamental crops, as well as a diversity of regionally significant wild utilized plants. Many of these species are threatened in their natural habitats, and most are underrepresented in plant genebanks and botanical gardens. These conservation gaps limit the portfolio of useful plant diversity available to present and future generations. Likewise, the myriad potential uses of North American crop wild relatives and wild utilized plants are underexplored, and public awareness of their value and threats is limited. Greater coordination of efforts among plant conservation, land management, agricultural science, and botanical education and outreach organizations will be necessary to secure, enhance use, and raise awareness with regard to these species. A road map for collaborative action is presented here, focused on five priorities: (i) to understand and document North America’s crop wild relatives and wild utilized plants, (ii) to protect threatened species in their natural habitats, (iii) to collect and conserve ex situ the diversity of prioritized species, (iv) to make this diversity accessible and attractive for plant breeding, research, and education, and (v) to raise public awareness of their value and the threats to their persistence

Comparison of Postfire Seeding Practices for Wyoming Big Sagebrush

Wildfires in the Great Basin have resulted in widespread loss of Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt. ssp. wyomingensis Beetle & Young), an ecologically important shrub that has proven difficult to establish from seed. We sought to identify optimal seeding practices for Wyoming big sagebrush in the context of postfire seeding operations involving rangeland drills. In an experiment replicated at three burned sites in the northern Great Basin, we compared Wyoming big sagebrush establishment across treatments differing by seed delivery technique, timing, and rate of seed application. A seed mix containing bunchgrasses was drill-seeded in alternate rows using one of two drill-types (conventional or minimum-till), and a mix containing sagebrush was either delivered by drill to the soil surface in remaining rows or broadcast by hand (simulating aerial seeding) following drilling in fall or winter. Drill-delivery of sagebrush seed was accompanied by drag chains (conventional drill) or imprinter wheels (minimum-till drill) to improve seed-soil contact and was carried out at multiple seeding rates (ca. 50,250, and 500 pure live seed m-2). During 2 yr following seeding, sagebrush establishment was lower at two sites (yr 1: ≤ 1.2 plants m-2; yr 2: ≤ 0.8 plants m-2) compared with a third site (yr 1: ≤ 4.1 plants m-2; yr 2: ≤ 2.0 plants m-2) where treatment differences were more pronounced and significant. Wherever density differed between treatments, it was consistently higher in certain treatment levels (minimum-till > conventional drill, drill-delivery > broadcast-delivery, fall broadcast > winter broadcast, and higher rates > lower rates). Densities declined between years at two sites, but we did not find evidence that declines were due to densitydependent mortality. Results indicate that seeding success can likely be enhanced by using a minimum-till imprinter seeding method and using seeding rates higher than typical postfire seeding recommendations for Wyoming big sagebrush. © Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of The Society for Range Management.The Rangeland Ecology & Management archives are made available by the Society for Range Management and the University of Arizona Libraries. Contact [email protected] for further information

Priority actions to improve provenance decision-making

Selecting the geographic origin-the provenance-of seed is a key decision in restoration. The last decade has seen a vigorous debate on whether to use local or nonlocal seed. The use of local seed has been the preferred approach because it is expected to maintain local adaptation and avoid deleterious population effects (e.g., maladaptation and outbreeding depression). However, the impacts of habitat fragmentation and climate change on plant populations have driven the debate on whether the local-is-best standard needs changing. This debate has largely been theoretical in nature, which hampers provenance decision-making. Here, we detail cross-sector priority actions to improve provenance decision-making, including embedding provenance trials into restoration projects; developing dynamic, evidence-based provenance policies; and establishing stronger research-practitioner collaborations to facilitate the adoption of research outcomes. We discuss how to tackle these priority actions in order to help satisfy the restoration sector's requirement for appropriately provenanced seed