IMPLEMENTING CROP WILD RELATIVESI: DIFFICULTIES IN ADJUSTING
AGRICULTURAL PRACTICES TO CLIMATE CHANGE
1.0 Introduction
With the effect of climate change rewriting our agricultural landscape each year, right
now the demand for farming systems that can weather that change has never been higher. Crop
wild relatives (CWR), or our cultivated crops’ cousins that have not been domesticated, act as
nature’s repository of genetic variation essential to the crops that we produce, which allows our
plants to respond to that environment. Through a process of natural selection over millennia, a
number of these amazing plants have developed across characteristics that will change
contemporary agriculture from a traditional one and also promise a solution to increasingly
difficult problems in the environment. However, the embedment of CWR into the existing
agricultural system has been a difficult process because of the inclusion of a large number of
biological, regulatory, and technical issues. The intricacies of such a web of implementation
challenges related to this type of CWR solution are illustrated, however. It also studies those
places where wild species have served to fuel these agricultural changes under climate
(vulnerability) conditions in different parts of the world. We can learn from the study of drought-
resistant maize projects in sub-Saharan Africa and heat-tolerant wheat in South Asia about how
climate-resilient wheats (CWRs) might be employed in a practical way to relieve climate-
induced agricultural stress.
2. Importance of Crop Wild Relatives in Climate Change Adaptation
2.1. Genetic Resources for Climate Resilience
The role of these CWR in breeding crops for climate change resilience cannot be
overemphasized because amidst the untamed plants are sources of an untapped gene pool of
variation that has taken thousands of years in the making. These natural variants have signified
extraordinary capability to perform genetic adaptation to many environmental phases; therefore,
these cultivars form part of the most significant genetic wealth as we facilitate against the effect
of climate on agriculture. Unleashed within them is a stockpile of photosynthetic genes that
could change today’s crops—improved tolerance to drought and heat and resistance to high
salinity. These features are found in CWR, which constitutes a laboratory of adaptive evolution
that has ample enough generations of natural selections that have secured the beneficial traits for
survival in austere environments. These resources become even more important as modern
farming wrestles with such environmental issues as never before. It has been established that
CWR populations harbor valuable all types that may allow for stress-adaptive mechanisms not
found in domesticated varieties that have undergone significant genetic erosion as a result of
domestication and breeding to enhance yield and product uniformity.
With regard to climate resilience, CWR’s genetic resources are endowed with several
levels of adaptation potential. Their genetic variation allows for the production of crop varieties
with improved physiological characteristics include deep root systems for increased water
uptake, changes in leaf structure to improve heat stress tolerance and changes in phenology to
suit changing planting seasons. The previous research has shown that CWR genes can be
successfully introduced into cultivated varieties with a view to enhance their stress tolerance. For
example, genes from wild wheat relatives have helped to develop drought tolerance and disease
resistance, and from wild rice species, flood tolerance and salinity resistance. It is now
understood that the traits in CWR are often the product of intricate gene interactions that enable
the organisms to react to environmental threats in a flexible manner; this makes CWR ideal
sources of genes for improving the climate change tolerance of crops. This genetic complexity
provides a stronger and longer-lasting resistance than the single gene source traits normally used
in breeding programs.
CWR genetic resources are relevant for the direct application of desirable traits to crops
as well as for learning how this adaptation is made. Thus, scientists could understand on how
different wild animals have differed in their ability for adaptation to extreme weather, thereby
getting a clue on the genetic and physiological basis of climate change adapting. Besides, the
breeding improvement and the identification of new methods to benefit crop breeding are highly
facilitated by the information provided here. CWR populations can therefore be seen as a hedge
against future agriculture where genes can be cultivated for as yet unidentified situations that
may arise because of characteristics of climate change. While the conservation and evaluation of
such genetic elements is, however, important for the current selection programs, it seems to be
even more crucial for the future requirements and selection philosophies. The ability to utilize
positive attributes of CWR has been done better due to advancement in technology more
especially in genomic studies thereby increasing the value of CWR genetic assets. All these
coupled with these high-tech instruments, the increasing impact of the climate change
phenomenon emphasizes the importance of the conservation and further study of CWR
population as valuable resources for climate change mitigation in agriculturally based
ecosystems.
2.2. Role in Breeding Programs
Breeding of crop wild relatives described below can be considered a major advancement
in agricultural adaptation to climate change. As far as the older breeding agendas are concerned,
most of the strain enhancements have oriented towards enhancing crop production and disease
resistance. Such programs were usually carried out with limited genetic differentiation within the
domesticated crop varieties. Whereas, the integration of CWR into breeding programs has
provided new vistas on crop improvement particularly for climate proof cultivars. Some of these
changes that might be containable from such wild species can improve stress tolerance in the
crop, they can also improve resource use efficiency hence improving on crop resilience. In one
sense, CWR is viewed as a lexicon in its broadest terms as a secondary source for genetic
introduction to be introduced to modern plant breeding systems. Such recognition enables the
breeders to originate varieties that preform the tougher part of the environmental stick including
dry weather, high temperatures, floods and poor quality of soil.
As derived from the study, CWR involvement in breeding programs is much than just
identifying these traits and transferring them. These wild species assist breeders to reflect on
such adaptations that address mechanisms, which have presumably evolved over millennia.
Affording better control on selection tools like MAS and GS, it has become progressively
effortless to isolate the choosy genes from CWR irrespective of some inferior characters. The
precision breeding strategy has worked out immensely crucial improvements by the launch of
new release crops that tolerate the climate. Besides, gene base adaptability in CWR populations
is usually greater than in crops that have been domesticated germplasm; this makes such
populations a source of germplasm for tackling issues brought about by climate change. To the
writer’s knowledge, the successful technologies have yielded several newly released commercial
varieties that possess CWR traits improving stress tolerance, yield stability, and adaptability to
suboptimal production environments. CWR has also been applied in plant breeding to develop
crops with high nutritional quality that are well-endowed with resistance to new pests and
diseases brought about by climate change. These developments are witness to the extent with
reference to the suitability emerging from the improvement of CWR genetics into the kind of
breeding presently in the breeding.
Breeding initiatives prior to breeding for crossbreed with indigenous breeds also seem to
have expanded the previously employed highly technical methods of genomic trait selection and
phenotyping. It is crucial to note that these programs act as a link between increased germplasm
of the wild gene pool and breeding stock, providing material that can be more easily incorporated
into normal crossing programs. Through the use of chromosome segment substitution lines
(CSSLs) and other related stocks, there is increased ease of transferring the desired traits from
the wild relatives without having to accept the complete genome of the wild relatives. The
rational incorporation of CWR in breeding programs has helped to enhance the process of
developing new crop varieties consistent with climate change adaptation. The use of new
phenotyping platforms that include high-throughput phenotyping and effective genomic
instruments, breeders have found it easier to transform favorable traits from CWR. These
technologies allow the selection of targeted traits along with few or no undesired traits—what
has been referred to as linkage drag. The progress in crossing techniques and tissue culture has
ensured that some of the barriers associated with the use of distant wild relatives in breeding
programs have been eliminated.
Four new approaches that may further improve the CWR potential are also being tested in
breeding programs. The strategies are new methods of breeding which are fast methods and
incorporation of artificial intelligence. With these new methods, CWR potentials should have
been enhanced in various ways. There are now more derived options available in addition to the
routine methods of breeding that have been utilized previously to mitigate the problems that
come with crossing MDs and selection on multi-genic sites. This CWR has enhanced the
provocation of vigor and variety into crop populations when developing breeding models that are
sensitive to environmental forces. In addition to consolidating the current climatic assurance, this
approach also aids in pushing forward a structure that is important for the enhancement of the
crop in the future and frees food security in climatic areas that are assumed to be changing. As
suggested by the use of machine learning activities, the screening rate of desired CWR features
as well as the outcome of the favorable allele of improved crop varieties have risen. Techniques
of editing genes make it easier to apply CWR genetics in a selective manner, and this enables the
desired phenotypic valued traits into crops as well as excluding the others. This has been made
possible by the advanced gene editing technologies that have been developed during the recent
past. A higher proportion of technical advance, simultaneously with a better understanding of the
phenotypic aspects of plants, is a factor in the promotion of excellent traits in the aspect of
raising the likelihood of deploying adaptive potential of CWR into a breeding program.
3. Challenges in Utilizing Crop Wild Relatives for Climate Change Adaptation
3.1. Biological and Genetic Barriers
The use of CWR in climate change adaptation is however hampered by biological and
genetic challenges that affect their incorporation into breeding programs. One limitation has to
do with crossing treating armed crops and their wild relatives, which they differ in ploidy or
chromosomal arrangement. These barriers can lead to low fecundity or complete failure of
crossing, but with the adoption of techniques like embryo rescue or colchicine treatment for
chromosome doubling cross breeding is possible. Researchers have to test a large number of wild
relatives for germplasm accession in order to select crosses that will result in viable progeny.
Now with the help of embryo rescue mechanisms the fertility too may remain low and therefore
the population size for selection too will be small. Further cycles for doubling of chromosomes
or rendering to the cultivated parents may be required to regain complete fertility. Other than
fertilization barriers, breeders encounter linkage drag whereby undesirable genes from wild
relatives are brought in together with the desirable genes such as, pest or disease resistance. Such
negative characters often include lower yield potential, poor grain or fruit traits, taller plant
types, shattering reactions or susceptibility to particular diseases. This in turn reduces the
agronomic performance and market potential of hypothetical new types. High degree of linkage
between the undesirable genes and the target loci often makes it very difficult to achieve genetic
separation by simple crossing. The genetic maps and mortgage resources enable the
identification of targeted genes and fine-specific introgression while eliminating perilous genes
linked with those being targeted. The modern molecular methods such as high-throughput
marker and genomic selection for maintenance of introgression segments and selections on the
basis of WGEV are possible. Breeders in developing nations might not have adequate funds and
facilities to carry out the required investigation, which will limit their ability to exploit crop wild
relatives.
The shifts identified in climate resilience traits add impetus to the challenges of
exploiting CWR genetic resources and almost all adaptive traits including drought tolerance, heat
resistance, and salinity tolerance are quantitative characters, which are regulated by many genes
and their controlling networks all over the genome. This genetic structure makes it extremely
challenging to accurately determine, sufficiently delimitate, and effectively introduce the useful
genetic factors originating from wild relatives into cultivated crop varieties through classical
breeding approaches or biotechnological methods. Further, the expression levels and patterns of
polygenic traits associated with these qualities often exhibit significant gene-environment
interactions, indicating that, while there may be genes that when expressed favorably in wild
populations growing under certain conditions, they may not be expressed the same way when
‘translocated’ to cultigen varieties or where expression occurs under different environmental
conditions. This context-dependency creates extra difficulties for breeders who want to detect
and introduce the climate resilience traits that will always bring adaptations across the range of
the existing and potential AG. In addition, the generation time and life cycles of many wild crop
relatives offer additional technical challenges, challenges that may take three or more years and
sometimes up to 10 years or so to complete before actual crosses with cropped varieties can be
made. Other wild relatives of crop plants may bloom biennially, episodically or otherwise
abnormally under given seasonal signals or other plant stresses making it extremely difficult to
achieve successful crossing of these plants under artificial settings. Substantial progress towards
harnessing the valuable genetic resource for climate adaptation that resides genetically diverse
yet mostly untapped in CWR may require additional enhancement of genomic tools, predictive
environmental modeling techniques, besides sophisticated controlled environmental facilities.
Even when crops and their wild relatives are closely related, the degree of gene
difference can lead to decreased recombination rates within hybrid communities and thus limited
options for productive genotypic exchange. That is, during crop breeding when crops are crossed
with wild relatives to get rid of weaknesses or to incorporate strength from wild relatives, the
subject genomes are very dissimilar and therefore low chances of recombination in the hybrids.
From the above discussion it is evident that retention of large segments of the wild species
chromosomal segments and their corresponding favorable or unfavorable genes can occur at the
expense of not allowing passage of individual genes of interest at all. This means that the linkage
blocks in these crops could be harder and harder to separate from one another, and harder and
harder to tet apart from the marvelous genes which make crop performance fall. The size of the
wild chromosomal segments involves extra genes which breeders have not planned to transfer.
The fact that the changes can be cryptic structural variations in between cultivated and wild
genomes, for instance, inversions, translocations, duplications and deletions that are not visible
from genome sequencing can also make it even harder to achieve genes transfer and normal
expression once relocated to a different genome. Besides, there may be certain physical-chemical
characteristics known as epigenetic marks, chemical tags that control gene activity, which can
modulate phenotypic traits in enigmatic manner, especially when one moves genes from one
genetic background of domesticated crops to another, that belong to their wild progenitor stocks.
These sorts of biological barriers frequently require successive generations of further back
crossing to one of the cultivated parent along with selection for the progeny that retain the
beneficial parts of the wild gene or a DNA sequence while minimizing linkage drag or the
presence of unwanted traits from the wild type parent. This additional cost in terms of extra
crosses and further and wide field trials to achieve the wanted traits enhances the time factor that
takes many years to develop climate resilient varieties through crop wild relative utilization.
3.2. Regulatory and Policy Barriers
There are several challenges in the area of Crop Wild Relatives regulation policy and
availability hinder their effective use in climate change adaptation strategies. ABS measures
while laudable in protecting genetic resources and ensuring that countries or regions of origin are
paid fair price for samples collected present serious challenges to researchers and breeders. The
actual application of the PRI and MAT resulting from the Nagoya Protocol means additional
burdensome procedures for obtaining PIC and concluding MAT for the collection and use of
genetic resources. These requirements are often protracted processes that include consultations
strength with national authorities, different communities and indigenous people, which takes a
lot of time and significantly impairs crop and breeding programs that seek to use Crop Wild
Relatives as a source of developing climate smart crops. International cooperation and
germplasm exchange is also made difficult by the differences across countries in the extent and
kinds of ABS regulations that must be negotiated at an international level. Besides ABS rules
associated risks, regulatory ambiguity in approval and commercialization of crop varieties
genetically engineered or with exotic segments from Crop Wild Relatives also causes the sword
hesitation among technology developers and reduces private investments in CWR studies.
However, inadequate public funding and research facilities targeting Unlocking and Utilizing the
genetic potential of CWR- Crop Wild Relatives. Mitigating these policy, legal, economic and
institutional bottlenecks are within the policy-makers, funders, researchers, farmers’, collector’s,
and even breeder’s purview, if addressed, hold great return in manner of increasing the rate of
adaptation to Climate Change through Crop Wild Relatives in agriculture.
The third and complex issue related to the utilization of CWR resources is within the
context of the rather contemporary IPR framework. Resulting from new laws encouraging
privatization, the growing privatization of genetic resources under different types of proprietary
rights, particularly through the patent system, hinders germplasm and breeding technologies
collection. While in the past, patents could be tied purely to protect mechanical innovations
today, a biosphere essential such as genes, traits and breeding techniques can be patented. Such
gene patents may result in breeding dependencies because utilization of wild relatives may be
blocked in breeding programs and because patents holders, majority often being private
companies, demand expensive licensing fees and royalties. In addition, legal uncertainty that
may arise from lack of clear grasp on the patent rights of naturally occurring alleles from wild
relatives as well as their derivatives deters investment in CWR based breeding programs. Such
concerns make it unattractive for private companies to invest in developing new crop varieties
from hard-to-acquires wild germplasm for the purpose of facing the risk whereby the subject
matter of the finished crops may be subsequently patented by another company based on
purported origin in wild species. This along with the legal complexities of the enhanced various
levels of IPR protection such as plant variety rights protection, utility patents and traditional
knowledge rights increases the uncertainty of the regulatory environment.
In addition, the availability and use of Crop Wild Relatives resources is also influenced
by voids in the legislation of conservation and policy. Some wild relatives are located in
protected or special use zones where collection can be quite limited or impossible due to
environmental and conservation laws which come into play in protecting special ecosystems and
endangered species. In contrast, one could view that the genetic variability in CWRs could offer
important climate adaptability traits for developing crops. At present, there is no parallel
coordination between the conservation laws that emphasize on environment and the agricultural
research requirements that pertain to food supply which in turn work against it, as they hamper
the utilization of possibly valuable genetic stocks based on the wild crops. Additionally,
phytosanitary regulation and actual measures to achieve biosecurity at the level of preventing the
spread of pests and diseases of the plants across borders restrict somehow the transfer of wild
germplasm over the borders. This inflates expenses while elongating the durations that plant
breeding projects that involve moving a variety of plant propagative materials across countries.
A good number of countries struggling with distinctly unfocused national policies for CWR
conservation and their sustained use might end up with the slow erosion and disappearance of
what would be invaluable resources in the face of the challenges posed by climate change to key
staple food sources. Conservation policies of the countries will have to allow a regulated use of
CWR diversity in protected areas, or in areas that adhere strictly to conservation measures, while
international agreements guaranteeing the safe transfer of germplasm will help overcome these
barriers. Filled on this understanding however, the actual promotion of CWRs’ climate resilience
benefits entails realizing policy contexts that embrace CWR’s objectives together with the food
security/ agricultural development priorities.
3.3. Technological Barriers
The technological constraints in the use of CWR for climate change resilience are
considerable and complex especially to modern day breeding practices. In order to characterize
and evaluate the wild germplasm, the sets of high-throughput phenotyping tools need to be
applied for monitoring of complex adaptive traits in distinct environments. More recent
developments on high-throughput phenotyping platforms have seen improvements in imaging
systems, sensors, robotics and analytical software to capture measures of plant growth and
productivity however, high-throughput phenotyping systems tend to fall short when quantifying
complex traits such as the physiological and morphological features that favors climate resilience
in wild relatives and local adapted varieties. Substrate includes aspects such as original root
structures, cuticular wax layer, stoma control, and metabolite loading, which facilitate stress
responses such as drought, heating, flooding and salinity stress. It is often costly to develop,
manage and sustain the technologically advanced imaging, sensors and robotics based
phenotyping pipelines and this is well beyond the reach of crop breeding programs in public
domain especially in developing countries where Crop Wild Relatives are abundant due to
existence of Vavilovian centers of crop origin. Additionally, the process of obtaining more
phenotypes for the purpose of assessing climate-resilience traits in diverse wild species from
variable environments poses technical complexity due to variation in responses among
genotypes. Greater and easier public access to data and tools, collaboration for method checking
and verification, and developing cost-effective strategies for application in low-resource
programs are important gaps for delineating CWR/LSA diversity important to climate change
objectives.
The option of genomic tools and technologies that are required for application of CWR
resources is yet another question of technologies. Since the introduction of next-generation
sequencing technologies, more breeding programs have been able to sequence and assemble the
plant genomes of interest; nevertheless, the assembly and, in particular, the annotation of the
complex genomes of wild relatives remain a problematic endeavor for many crops, especially for
polyploidy species, containing more than two sets of chromosomes, and species with giant,
highly repetitive genomes. The proper joining of these large genomes is challenging and needs
large coverage and for haplotype phasing proper tool to delimit repetitive regions, which can be
expensive and computational demanding for small many breeding programs that do not have in-
house bioinformatics support. Furthermore, once high quality wild relative genome assemblies
are generated, the task of flagging superior alleles and the associated regulatory elements present
in the genome, peppered across different chromosomes, cannot be easily depicted and remains a
challenging bioinformatics exercise and may not always be accessible to all public and private
breeding based organizations. This could reduce chances of identifying and incorporating
genetically important WR accessions by breeding programs that may not afford the very best
genomic and bioinformatics tools. In addition, the identification of molecular markers that can be
used to monitor chromosomal segments derived from wild relatives in breeding program could
be sensitive due to large genetic distances between crops and their wild relatives, which limits
the usefulness of some DNA ‘signature’ sequences from crops in wild relatives and requires the
development of new markers within wild relatives prior to application in breeding program. All
these diverse technological and bioinformatics problems dealing with characterization and
utilization of difficult crop wild relative genomes remain major obstacles to unlocking their
potential for crop improvement. Breaching these barriers in the future may require enhanced
investment by the public and private sectors in wild relative genomics tools and tailored breeding
platform.
The combination of technology tools to advance breeding together with crop wild relative
(CWR) utilization has several technical challenges that needs to be overcome. Thus, the
application of highly efficient and specific genome editing tools like CRISPR-CAS-9 based
approaches have been suggested for targeted trait transfer from CWR but their utility entails
species specific stringent optimization of protocol for transformation and regeneration system.
Most wild type animals have been hard to transgenically manipulate or do not survive when
tissues are cultured and then used for regeneration. This is particularly the case even with species
that are easy to amenable for genetic manipulation; transformation efficiency can be extremely
low. In addition, the use of efficient bridging crosses and intermediate breeding approaches to
overcome RI barriers between crops and CWRs requires skills in technical controlled
hybridization and generation of accurate early generations hybrids. Furthermore, long-term
conservation of the wild germplasm often requires effective cryopreservation techniques which
pose technical challenges especially if the desired target species possesses desiccation sensitive
seeds otherwise referred to as recalcitrant seeds or when dealing with clonal material that
reproduces asexually and thus produces no seeds. Managing comprehensive living collections of
CWRs also requires appropriate structures and standard growing environments to reduce genetic
degradation processes and adequate know-how on the characterization and documentation of the
materials. This means that due to the complexity of CWRs, only using the tools, techniques and
people it is possible to allocate a resource to climatically-safe crops necessary for feeding the
world’s growing population affected with the effects of climate change. The single future multi-
institutional collaborative networks that integrate current genomic science and modern selection
methods suitable for reproductive and biological characteristics of wild animals can only provide
this problem.
4. Case Studies of Successful Integration of Crop Wild Relatives in Agriculture
4.1. Drought-Tolerant Maize in Sub-Saharan Africa
The breeding of drought resistant marketable maize varieties in SSA is seen as another
landmark in the incorporation of CWR into the formal crop production systems. It started in
early 1990s when researchers found desirable drought tolerance genes in several wild teosinte
varieties, especially Zea diploperennis and Zea nicaraguensis. These wild relatives that grew in
areas characterized by seasonal droughts had developed some efficient mechanisms over
thousands of years of adaptation to water limited environments, including strongly developed
root systems for water uptake, water use efficiency brought about by precise regulation of
stomata and optimized leaf structure, and higher rates of photosynthesis under water stress
conditions. Longo Rog and colleagues by performing multiple-years systematic assessment of
different wild populations in selected habitats searched for genomic regions linked to particular
component drought tolerance traits that provided selective benefits. The first times such a cross
was attempted between the domesticated corn and these wild relatives of MAZ were very
difficult as the two are reproductively isolated to a large extent but ultimately with state of art
techniques that include embryo rescue and cross breeding techniques in the wild. This genome
has been successfully hybridized with the cultivated genome over a period of nearly a decade.
The derived low yielding intermediate bridge maize germplasm contributed significant value as
genetic bridge for transferring drought tolerance traits through successive back crossing into
better genetic pools. Phenotypic and genomic selection enhanced integration of exotic drought
tolerance alleles, albeit maintaining high yield potential. These precisely articulated systematic
protocols to utilize Crop Wild Relatives have resulted in drought resistant maize varieties which
yield significant premiums under moderate to severe water stress, creating improved food
security for smallholder farmers across moisture stressed farming areas in Sub-Saharan Africa.
To achieve this breeding program; both traditional and molecular techniques were
employed to create varieties that have the ability to handle moderate drought stress and possibly
maintain high yields. Marker-assisted selection was particularly important in helping breeders to
accurately follow the desirable alleles for drought tolerance, from wild relatives and landraces
but without unknowingly dragging along unwanted genes that could have a detrimental on yield
potential. During a cycle of backcrossing, efforts for embodying stem rust resistance genes in
elite line and subsequent multistage selection process through identifying potential germplasm
under simulated managed drought stress condition of field environments, breeders achieved the
progressive line improvement. Field tests conducted on multiple research stations within and
across various ecological zones and production systems in major EA countries such as Kenya,
Tanzania, Uganda as well as Malawi revealed that the most promising international maize and
wheat Improvement center board’s early-maturing drought-tolerant maize varieties had relative
advantages of 25-35 % in grain yield under moderate water stress compared to the traditional
farmer popular varieties, but with similar performance under favorable no-stress conditions.
Most importantly, all these above mentioned large gains in yield potential under water deficit
conditions seemed to occur without much reduction in other important traits of agro-technology
performance like resistance to diseases or physical and chemical quality of grains such as milling
recoveries that may determine farmer acceptance. Moreover, great effort was made on carrying
out participatory varietal selection involving consultations with smallholder farmers in the
various stations to come up with genotypes that have responded well to drought stress but also
meet basket of socio-cultural attributes important to farmers such as cooking quality and taste to
secure potential rates of adoption of improved varieties amongst vulnerable farmer groups that
would greatly benefit from the genetic yield improvements brought about by drought tolerant
varieties.
With the help of the innovation, change in sustainable production of crops and food
insecurity menace has been addressed through developing drought tolerant maize varieties.
Various economic reviews also indicated that farmers using such varieties earn higher income
steadiness concerning attributes like yields in the drought years where farmers, using such
varieties were able to avoid poor yields. The improved varieties have highest benefits to small
holder farmers in low rainfall production base areas. This is as confirmed by the farmer’s
experience where the new varieties do not only assure of high yields but also the ordering of new
fixed planting dates than older varieties thus suitable for the erratic rainfall. The varieties have
been profitable in the sense that farmers are able to harvest more, this particularly with
unpredictability of the weather years. They can withstand the drought, that has in a way boosted
the food security amongst farming families and the rural populace. After realizing the gains,
which have resulted from the improvements on these variety, national governments and
agricultural research institution have budgeted more on the development of even more superior
crop varieties improved. It has moved to other related factors like such as resistance to pests and
diseases, micronutrients and temperature conditions. This intensified breeding effort is using all
these wild crop relatives in as donors of useful genes. This breeding pipeline for soybeans and
other crops has been improved through the linkages made to international and national research
institutes, extension agencies, seed traders and cooperatives. There has indeed been a lot of
improvement in several crop improvement undertakings because of the networks ad capacities
built during the initial years of drought-tolerant maize breeding. This case demonstrates that the
long-run funding for improving pre-breeding with wild relatives or better still building human
capital for plant breeder has large returns that are all linked to food security, farmer income and
climate change. The consequences stress that crop genetic resources could produce much more in
the form of innovation than they do at present.
4.2. Heat-Tolerant Wheat in South Asia
Successful exploitation of wild relative diversity includes heat-tolerant wheat varieties for
South Asia as one of the sharp-tipped tools to address climate change challenges. This breeding
program used several wild wheat species that prevail in regions with high temperature during
grain filling including Aegilops speltoides and Triticum dicoccoides. A number of primary
inquiries to wild germplasms helped detect accessions with better thermotolerance in early
phases, special concentration on heat impact on pollen sterility and rice grain formation.
Physiological analysis indicated improved membrane rigidity and efficacy of antioxidant and
heat shock proteins along with elevated heat threshold of photosynthesis in both wild relatives.
These advantageous characters were introduced into cultivated wheat through overcome of
serious crossing barriers and low fertility of the wild and domesticated species. Complex
methods that include crossing with two different hybrids, embryo recovery, to realize heat
tolerant offspring and chromosome pairing skills were used to usher the HTLs gradually from the
wild type germplasm. While exchange of exotic genes was achieved through back crossing to
elite cultivars, some important agricultural traits were retained. The program also had better
advanced genomic tools such as molecular markers for selecting and introgressing the particular
chromosomal segments from wild wheat that possessed higher thermotolerance. Yield
performance and adaptation multi-environment field trials were conducted in more than one
center from heat affected states. The best performing lines were completely used as varieties or
at least in the form of parents in subsequent crosses. Combining these two approaches, the
project has released more than a dozen heat-tolerant varieties in the last twenty years to much
positive impact for growth-oriented wheat farmers in South Asia. Increased adoption of these
resilient varieties has by itself enhanced food security and profitability of farmers practicing
production in marginal areas vulnerable to change in climate. This breeding action plan and
achievement will have important experience that using wild gene pool to enhance climate
resilient crop varieties around the world.
During the breeding process, the line was test-crossed under both tentative and field
environments in the major wheat growing tracts of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Trials across
multiple locations in different years and cropping seasons established heat tolerance traits that
remain consistent across diverse genetic backgrounds and agro-climatic conditions. The results
of numerous field trials of 1593 plants derived from segregating populations, using marker
assisted selections, identified the most promising breeding lines possessing the ability to
maintain a good grain filling and yield stability during terminal heat stress, under heading time
temperature regime, which was 2-3°C higher than the upper optimum growing temperature range
for the traditional commercial varieties adapted to the target regions. Molecular marker assisted
characterization demonstrated successful introgression of several new thermotolerance genes
from selected wild relatives and landraces with high GFD thermotolerance in multiple
populations. It also focused on other important traits like, resistance to the most dominant foliar
fungal diseases, grain quality parameters for making chapatti, high milling and dough rheology
properties for bread bakery products, biscuits and pasta. SI and other NARS centers work closely
with a national crop improvement programs within the public sector in South Asia as well as
local agricultural universities to ensure the rapid multi-location evaluation and testing of
improved germplasm under heat stress conditions during or in relation to the flowering and grain
fill. Landscape farmer participatory field trials were instrumental in defining and rating the
‘preferred’ heat tolerance varieties implying that in addition to possessing the target heat
tolerance traits the plant varieties also had other desirable consumer and farmer value added
attributes such as maturity duration, plant height, grain characteristics and end-use quality
attributes in accordance with farmers’ food habits and regular farming practices.
Heat-tolerant wheat varieties have been most useful in areas where temperatures are
rising during the course of growing season. Economic analysis suggest that these varieties have
enabled support production in regions where the local varieties provide very low yields due to
heat stress. The new adapted germplasms have also exhibited improved performance during
early planting conditions, enabling changes in cropping system regime. They have also revealed
high farmer satisfaction on the yields of new varieties notably on heat stress growth period often
resulting in terminal heat stress on wheat crop performance. This has been a success in
encouraging more investment on wild relative utilization for breeding improved climate change
resilient wheat types that can perform well under hard conditions. However, such population
genetic resources and the methodologies used in this work have also been useful in other wheat
improvement program around the world. These include large scale breeding programs of wheat
in North and South American, European, Australia and Asia using similar strategy as given
above to transfer desirable genes from wild relatives into adapted genotypes. It is paramount to
note that the given case shows that the long-term maintenance of intensive pre-breeding
measures is crucial and that transnational cooperation is the key to the reasonable usage of wild
relatives to improve crops. This and in the future, through global partnership for the utilization of
genetic resources on wheat improvement, there will be important factors enhancing future food
security under changing weather environments as characterized by climate change. Efforts
towards increasing genetic tolerance to abiotic stress as such for wheat farmers in the developing
world may have significant positive effects.
5. Strategies for Overcoming Barriers in Implementing Crop Wild Relatives
5.1. Enhancing Collaboration Among Stakeholders
The externality rationale of cooperation with private institutions has turned into the main
strategy to solve the problems of lack of resources and the absence of technical expertise at the
sector level. Such partnerships include cooperative and pre-competitive research associations and
collaborations in which participants from governmental and non-governmental organizations,
academic institutions, industries, non-profit organizations, and the communities bring in the risks
associated with such projects, assimilate their strengths, and coordinate their efforts to pursue
mutually beneficial goals. The few successful partnership models in the field of crop wild
relative utilization for agriculture include the formation of coalition for developing molecular
markers, for multi-location phenotyping networks, and for maintaining germplasm collections in
gene banks. Through these agricultural initiatives, farmer organizations and indigenous peoples
are engaged as key stakeholders active in these efforts to ensure that the cultural and botanical
wisdom and knowledge on wild relatives is respected and incorporated into the breeding
practices in crop plants. Stakeholder meetings play the role of fostering trust and understanding
among partners, seeing-is-believing meetings and field days, hands-on training programs and
consistent, ongoing dialogue. It also indicates the need for partners to strike a deal or formal
agreements to handle problems like intellectual property rights and data sharing, access and
benefit sharing, and governance systems and structures and other related issues that could give
rise to conflict of interest and shield the partnership from extraneous influences in order to
ensure that every partner pulls own his or her weight commensurate with the role he or she plays
in that partnership. Partnership process documentation and the exchange of best practices
amongst collaborators, with ever-present evaluation and refinement, promote strong
improvement in collaboration processes in the long term for the benefit of all parties involved in
the conservation and utilization of wild relatives.
Some forms of collaboration under which public private partnerships fall are becoming
the main way of dealing with large resource limitations and technical challenges that stifle
progress in some important specialized fields of research and new technology development.
These cooperative partnerships may often entail efficient pre-competitive research
collaborations, in which positions of stakeholders from academia, industry, government, NGOs,
and community coincide as to risks to be taken, resources to be pooled and efforts to be made
towards common goals in such activity areas as sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, or
health enhancements. Among such consortia one potential area of synergies exists in breeding
activities to introduce crop wild relatives – wild and weedy relatives of crops. Few successful
examples in this regard are development of high throughput molecular markers; formation of
large scaled phenotypic analysis networks for characterization of wild germplasm; and most
significantly, creation of stocks of wild relatives’ germplasm for research only. Even more
importantly, farmer associations and indigenous people are often involved in many of the
consortia so that the existing knowledge of CWR is appropriately attributed more appropriately
incorporated into the contemporary selective breeding practices aiming at improving traits such
as droughts or disease resistance. Working meeting, forum where various ideas can be discussed
and actual working sessions which personally involve all the participants of the consortia keep
the members actively communicating and building even more positive interpersonal
communication with each other on the continually progressive manner. The fact that written and
signed agreements regarding such concern as IPR, OD, and benefits-sharing minimize possible
conflict of interest in shared undertaking. The situation involves the description of how the best
practices progress with major stakeholders in the partnership enhancing the partnership processes
over time to optimality of the research partnership in the production of the appropriate research.
Financial sustainability, therefore, can be rightly formed as one of the key elements of
stakeholder involvement in wild relative utilization programs. The continued funding is required
for these kinds of interventions, which typically require coordination of and collaboration among
multiple large institutions in different sectors. Public Private Partnerships, matching funds from
government and other sources, grants, and impact investment structures that provide social as
well as financial returns are some known ways of ensuring that multi-stakeholder robust
partnership is achieved. To sustain the interest and trust of stakeholders, special efforts of
negotiation for reasonable sharing of benefits are required to be established between the
stakeholders involved – specifically, the farmer producer communities who conserve and provide
access to the genetic resources, and the public research institutes which provide the germplasm.
The work based on the use of wild crop relatives may be carried out with the assistance of
diversified funding, including on the intergovernmental organizations requiring in the
development of agriculture, the charitable foundations involved in agricultural and conservation,
and the national bodies for the funding of research. The identification of profitable business
strategies that may help commercialize improved varieties from wild relatives, will ensure that
monetary and non-monetary benefits are channeled back to important stakeholders to enable
continued research, breeding and conservation activities. Participatory monitoring and evaluation
of the collaborative activities among different stakeholder groups also assists to show value and
achievement of the utility of multiple stakeholder coordination for partners themselves and future
funders, thus how to justify sustained public and private investment in wild relative utilization
over the long-term.
5.2. Developing Capacity Building Programs
High relevance of capacity building programs in making the opportunity to use CWR in
breeding easy is a clear implication of the findings. It is thus noble for the support of these
programs that, capacity development has to be conceived in a variety of dimensions including
human resource, institutional and technology development. It is anticipated that all the main
areas concerned in the use of wild relatives should be included in the training needs, from
collection and conservation in seed banks, phenotyping and breeding (crossing techniques,
selection principles and genetic characterization by genomic tools). Particular emphasis should
be placed on the regional capacity building in the priority fields of application of systematics, for
instance, in field identification of species, assessment of ecological status of habitats, germplasm
collections management over long-term perspective. Additional conducted special or advanced
level courses and workshops on latest biotechnology tools and techniques, genomics and
bioinformatics in Crop Wild Relatives research and breeding helps to build up capacities and
competence of the national and local breeding programs to sue generic as well as novel &
precision molecular biology tools and bioinformatics strategy for efficient identification &
introduction of target traits/beneficial genes and alleles into the improved adapted gene pools.
Another really critical course/meeting/workshop that amateur scientists, senior and junior
scientists get to enjoy are; those training that involves hand-on experience, staff exchange visits
between two or more institutions/ countries & those that involve working under the mentorship
of senior scientists. The development of networked regional training centers of excellence
provides the realistic possibility of developing long-term sustainable training Capacity for Crop
Wild Relative research that is tailored to address local needs and issues but is supported by
globally competitive scientific and technical capability enhancement across all plant breeding
and plant genetic resource conservation disciplines.
It has been ascertained that infrastructure development is a critical element of the process
of capacity building in wild relative utilization, which has entailed development and
enhancement of various structures in germplasm conservation, characterization and evaluation.
Acquisition of modern laboratory equipment, field stations, and information technology systems
facilitate institutions to engage in wild relative breeding. Quality management systems and other
standards enable control of program and service providing quality as well as adherence to the
best practices across different locations. Training in the proper maintenance of complex
equipment and their functioning make the best use of the resources at hand. Particular emphasis
should be placed on capacity to maintain wild relatives in the long run on both in vitro seed
banks and in situ field gene banks. The development of sound telecommunication channel helps
in the exchange of information and also effective coordination with partners. Regular assessment
of infrastructure requirements supports destining of institutional capabilities. As for tangible
fixed assets, capital expenditure should be devoted to owned cold stores, seeds drying and
processing machinery, field phenotyping equipment, computers and database for data storage
and analysis, and molecular biology laboratory equipment and specialized instruments for
genotyping and quality tests; owned greenhouses and screen houses for controlled environment
testing; vehicles and owned multi-location sites for multi-location trials. It takes standard
operating procedure for regeneration, characterization, evaluation and exchange of germplasm
with the quality assurance. Employees at all ranks should be orientation of practical conservation
processes, methods of data collection and analysis, laboratory and field instrumentation,
statistical and database software, and telecommunication systems. The objective of future
surveys to track the status of existing infrastructure and observe emerging needs will be to
support plans and budget decisions. In this view, wild crop relatives must first be systematically
developed to become foundational infrastructure and capacities within institutions to address
food security.
The implementation of knowledge management and information sharing systems is
therefore crucial for constructing and sustaining the much needed capacity for the management
fo the wild relatives. The provision of various reference information of cases and contacts,
manuals for training and technical recommendation aids the process of knowledge management
by ensuring that such knowledge is put down in the right context in a way that makes it easy for
it to be passed to the new practitioners. Using ideas, products, and services that can be accessed
through online learning platforms and virtual training programs takes capacity building further
and creates learning formats for more people, to help them grasp facts, insights, and trends at a
time that is suitable for them. Promoting documentation of implicit information on the wild
relatives and their applications by the indigenous and local communities contributes to passing
out important information for the actual breeding activities in the future. Reference manuals,
standard operating procedures, best practices, how to, lesson learned, and other such documents
that capture practical knowledge are valid as far as constant practice is maintained on some
common pattern to avoid variations due to changes in personnel or due to the change of project.
Newsgroups, electronic mailing lists and other forms of interaction that can be utilized to support
the formation of communities of practice and to maintain the continuing flow of knowledge and
effective experience sharing among practitioners are existing internationally. Seek assistance
with questions, success stories and challenges and direction or anyway assist each other utilize
wild relatives as the resource in the manner it was intended. Continual updating of the training
materials and training procedures as a result of the assessment of the progress and requirements
on training indicate that the training development and application adapts to the latest
technologies and probable emergent concerns in the field like climate change in population and
new genomic manipulation. The expansion of monitoring and evaluation systems that are
integrated with strategic plans helps in the assessment of the results of the capacity building
process in diverse projects and zones for optimization of the effectiveness and quality.
6. Future Directions and Opportunities for Research and Implementation
6.1 Emerging Trends and Innovative Approaches in Research and Application
One major development found in studying CWRs and using them has been a combined
form of applying the conventional breeding techniques and the modern genomic techniques.
Recent advancements in technology in the last few years has made it possible to dissection of the
pan genome space of the wild species complex, and thereby identify new adaptive genes and
regulatory differences that may harbors biotic and abiotic stresses. Genetic algorithms are now
being used to estimate phenotypic consequences of outcrossing wild relatives into elite
genotypes which in return shorten the time and cost of preliminary selection of progeny. The
recent advances in the development of familiar and efficient genome editing systems such as
CRISPR-Cas9 has provided the opportunity to effect the introduction of beneficial traits from
wild relatives to crop cultivars in a short duration. To these genomic and bio-informatic
enhancements, there is a perennial specificity in the high through-put phenotyping relatively to
the precise life history characterization mechanisms that include imaging equipment modality,
spectral assessment and dense daunting sensor networks for examining multi-trait presences
under different or stressing environmental conditions. These technologies are helping the
researchers to address the major challenges which have been identified as key constraints to
harness and uses the enormous adaptive stock of CWRs for development of climate resilient crop
varieties. These technologies of genomics, bioinformatics, genome editing and precision
phenotyping are giving unparalleled opportunities in managing and harnessing the diverse
adaptive capacity of CWRs at genome wide level and enhancing the variety development
programs. Since climate change is now an imminent danger to future food production, exploring
CWR adaptive characteristics is increasingly becoming an emergency and these developments
are offering strong technological solutions to this quest.
Arguably, there is increasing practice in delivering on systematic measures towards
climate smart breeding that embraces wild relative diversity. The various research organizations
are formulating synergistic approaches of climate modelling, crop modelling and identification
of status and possibilities of genetic resources and their wild relatives for important adaptation
characters. These platforms employ advanced purely mathematical models of the climate’s
probable effect on crops and then search throughout the collections of the gene banks for plants’
wild relatives endowed with suitable adaptive genes. They also use artificial intelligence and big
data analytical tools to determine which relative wild traits could be most valuable in the future
different climates to increase the efficiency of bringing genes to the cultivated varieties.
Currently, there is a shift towards elucidating the functional biology of climate resilience traits in
wild relatives, such as water use efficiency, heat tolerance and nutrient Acquisition at the
extreme climate condition. Newer techniques for studying wild relative performance for the
predicted future hotter and drier climates include controlled environment culture where one can
manipulate climate conditions. Desirable favorable genes from other native relatives are being
transferred into the elite plant types by making use of rapid breeding and fast moving
generational technology which shortens the plant breeding period. The sort of multidisciplinary
approaches that are crossing global climate models with plant genetic resources assessment,
forecasting tools, and advanced plant breeding techniques have particular application in meeting
the immediate challenge of developing crop varieties that will sustain high levels of production
in the context of climate change. But there is still some need for additional investments into
multi-disciplinary collaboration as well as enhancement of the capacities of respective
institutions to fully capitalize on the wild gene pool potential for exploitation for climate smart
agriculture.
New ways of improving the utilization of wild relatives are being developed through a
combination of indigenous knowledge and scientific research. These strategies focus on the
scientist, the farmer, and the community in identifying, assessing, and utilization of attributes
originating from wild germplasms. There is growing appreciation of this Traditional Ecological
Knowledge as a rich source of information on adaptation of wild relatives to local environments
for hundreds of years or even millennia. Farmers in their own regions develop more fine-tuned
knowledge of how wild relatives relate to certain soils, climates, pests and traditional usage
practices. New strategies for on-station conservation of ex situ valuable GRS are emerging that
link conservation of wild relatives and their exploitation in plant breeding. The development of
dynamic conservation sites, where wild relatives may evolve in response to climate change as the
world evolves alongside providing full research access is reflective of some of the challenges
that arise when managing long-term populations of wild relatives. Such support structures of
seed systems and networks are also being enhanced to guarantee that developed crop varieties
from wild relatives achieve their destiny and reach the quarries; the smallholder farmers, through
their traditional channels. Such highly integrated and engaging shared approaches of the
contemporary science, and traditional knowledge or indigenous methods for climate change and
agriculture are paying off given the enhanced sustainable and integrated forms of Climate change
adaption and Rural development. Wild relatives should be embraced as a tool for enhancing
nutrition and revenue for growers and others as long as the different actors involved cooperate
and share resources equitably. For the future efforts it will be important to able to maximize the
current benefits from the wild relatives and to make sure that the local communities will be able
to continue to own the genetic resources.
7. Conclusion
7.1 Summary and Key Takeaways
The utilization of CWR in agricultural systems addressing climate change complexities is
one entailing a system of risks that should be managed and addressed as an interrelated
multiphase program with the requisite support from the science community, regulatory agencies,
the extension service, and farmers. Incorporation and adoption of traits from wild relatives into
the farming systems requires aggressive efforts to transform what farmers have practiced and
believed to be the correct from planting calendar and plant spacing to equipment and methods of
irrigation and fertilization appropriate to new varieties. These changes have to be made while
sustaining the yield and economic profitability of farming which is a very sensitive business
across the world especially in the climatically affected areas. There are also other socioeconomic
challenges that are unique to the scale-up process: Lack of available technical support for
farmers; inadequate financing methods; and inadequate and restricted market outlets that can
accommodate the new crops, especially for smallholders with few resources. To overcome these
challenges sustainable seed systems to provide and ensure availability of good seeds, effective,
and sustainable training programs and continuous monitoring tools to check rates of adoption
across the varied agriculture fields. Lack of policy support for other crops and insufficient public
extension that can deliver site-specific advice pose serious hurdles to the scaling-up of wild
relative-derived varieties. The use of wounded veterans’ relief fund has been documented to be
faced with a number of complex challenges, irrespective of the fact that incorporating it forms a
critical component of adapting agriculture to increasing climate change impacts. Thus, these
valuable genetic resources need careful identification of suitable management measures that can
help develop effective national and local environmental conditions, farm management systems
and social contexts in the threatened regions.
