An inventory of crop wild relatives and wild-utilized plants in Canada

<b>Abstract</b><br/><p><span lang="EN-US">In the face of global pressures of change and biodiversity loss, crop wild relatives (CWR) and wild-utilized plants (WUS) urgently require conservation attention. To advance conservation, we assembled a national inventory of CWR and WUS in Canada. To assess current ex situ conservation, we gathered a virtual metacollection of CWR and WUS accession data from national genebanks and from botanical gardens. The inventory includes 779 CWR and WUS taxa (658 distinct species), with 263 (222 distinct species) that are related to food crops of global and national importance such as blueberry and cranberry, apple, stone fruits, strawberry, sunflower and saskatoon. Sixty-one food crop CWR taxa are prioritized for breeding potential, and sixteen due to conservation threats. Although most food crop CWR are represented in ex situ collections (91% of species), representation of within-species diversity is low (median = 5% of Canadian ecogeographic types represented per species). Poor representation of within-species diversity demands an integrative conservation strategy that emphasizes <em>in situ</em> protection especially focusing on wild-populations in Canada’s southern ecoregions where diversity is concentrated. While genebank collections represent more species and higher accession counts per species, botanical gardens include living collections of charismatic fruit crop relatives and other woody-perennials that are well situated to advance conservation by raising broader awareness of CWR and WUS. To promote further conservation, we present a web application that enables conservation planners and practitioners to identify local CWR and WUS diversity and to identify within-species ecogeographic types that are underrepresented in <em>ex situ</em> conservation systems. </span></p>