Checklist of Vascular Plants, CWRs and WHPs of Lithuania

In the face of global climate change, biodiversity loss, and increasing risk of crop genetic erosion, the conservation of crop wild relatives (CWRs) and wild harvested plants (WHPs) has become urgent. As the first step towards preparing the Lithuanian national strategy for conservation of CWRs and WHPs, a preliminary checklist of vascular plants of Lithuania has been compiled. Out of this, an annotated CWR and WHP checklist was generated, containing plant taxa that are related to crops or are harvested in the wild for food, forage, medicinal, aromatic, industrial and other uses. As a result, an inventory of 147 CWR/WHP priority taxa for food and agriculture has been created by using several criteria including species relatedness to crops, socio-economic and cultural importance of species, and threat status of species. Our study offers a de novo assessment of CWR and WHP diversity in Lithuania and provides valuable insights regarding enhancement of conservation and sustainable use of the target taxa.