Crop Wild Relatives Around the World

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Bioversity International is an international research institute with a mandate to advance the conservation and use of genetic diversity for food and agriculture. They are also responsible for the Crop Wild Relatives global portal. One of Bioversity International’s key strengths is the organisations ability to connect people and projects from right across the globe.

Through their website and outreach initiatives they publicise a huge varity of local, national and international initiatives relating to human well-being and plant conservation. Click on the links below to get a flavour of some of the projects and people dealing with Crop Wild Relative issues around the world.

• Americas
• Asia, Pacific and Oceania
• Central and West Asia and North Africa
• Europe
• Sub-Saharan Africa

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International CWR work at the National Botanic Gardens Ireland

The promotion of African Crop Species Conservation

In 2011 the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland in conjunction with Nature Palace Botanic Gardens in Kampala, Uganda will construct a Ugandan Home Herbal Garden in the NBG’s organic display garden. The ‘Ugandan Home herbal Gardens’ is an initiative developed by the NPBG aimed at counteracting the rapid loss of plant resources in Uganda which result from habitat destruction and also promoting participation of community members in conservation of species while upholding their knowledge and appreciation of medicinal plants.  The initiative involves growing of medicinal plants in households as home or backyard gardens.  Participating households identify species they use most in treatment of common ailments and grow them so that next time they need them they do not go out looking for them in the wild – where chances are

that they may fail to get them when they need them.  The households get some of the planting materials from Nature Palace and sometimes they collect on their own.  They also suggest to the management when there is a species they want to grow but they can not access the necessary planting material.

The Ugandan Home Herbal Garden at NBG will cultivate a range of Ugandan economic plant species. The aim is to grow the plants in an authentic setting, with the emphasis on demonstrating high productivity potential in a small space. The preparation and uses of these species will be displayed using visual aids on the plot.

Since early 2009, Dr Darach Lupton of the NBGs of Ireland and Mr David Nkwanga, curator of NPBG have been working together to promote this and other plant conservation initiatives in Uganda. Darach and David both agree it is important that such local initiatives are promoted on the international stage. It is important that visitors to the NBG of Ireland come away with an appreciation with of the integral link between biodiversity conservation and human well-being. This is just one example of many thousands of such initiatives around the globe. It is hoped that Ugandan Home Herbal Garden will give visitors a sense of ‘thinking globally by acting locally’.