European Red List of Vascular Plants - European Commission

particularly important to Europe in terms of production
quantity and/or value were selected. In terms of production
quantity, there are 18 crops or crop groups of which
Europe produced an average of >1MT in five years from
2003–2007 that have CWR native to Europe that may
be important for crop improvement: wheat, sugar beet,
barley, grapes, rapeseed, apples, oats, cabbages (and other
brassicas), rye, olives, carrots and turnips, onions, peaches
and nectarines, peas, lettuce and chicory, pears, plums
and sloes, and strawberries (Figure 10). Note that there
are other economically important crops excluded from
this list (e.g., potato) that have wild relatives in Europe,
but they are very distant wild relatives – the centre of
diversity of the potato gene pool being in South America
– and are therefore not considered a priority in terms of
their potential as gene donors for crop improvement.
Figure 11 shows the average value of crops or crop groups
produced in Europe over five years from 2004–2008 that
have CWR native to Europe which may be important
for crop improvement. All of the crops or crop groups
included in this analysis are also included in the priority
list of human food crops based on production quantity.
This selection of 18 crops or crop groups is found within
19 genera within which there are 279 species native to
Europe.
Step 4: CWR of animal food crops
The production quantity and economic value data that
are available for human food crops are not available for
animal food crops on an individual crop basis; therefore,
it is not possible to prioritize animal food crops according
to these criteria. However, of the 279 CWR species
identified in the high priority human food CWR group,
106 are wild relatives of forage and/or fodder crops, as
well as human food crops; therefore, CWR of a number
of animal food crops are included in this list.
Step 5: CWR of other human and animal food crops
To add to the high priority list of 279 species described
above, Annex I of the International Treaty on Plant
Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA)
was also used as the basis for species selection. This is a
list of PGRFA established according to criteria of food
security and interdependence and includes 78 genera
containing human or animal food crops. Fifty-nine of
these genera contain taxa that are native to Europe, some
of which are already included in the high priority CWR
list defined above. Annex I of the ITPGRFA is divided
into two lists: 1) human food crops, and 2) forages.
The human food crop list mainly lists entire genera
because the CWR of these crops are recognized as being
important for food security. The forage list only includes
specific species because a) the crops are mainly selections
from wild species and the CWR are less likely to be used
for crop improvement, and b) many of the forage genera
contain a very large number of species; for example,
Festuca contains 204 species native to Europe.
Additional human food crop genera listed in Annex I of
the ITPGRFA that were included in the list of CWR for
assessment are: Asparagus, brassica complex (Armoracia,
Barbarea, Camelina, Crambe, Diplotaxis, Eruca, Isatis,
Lepidium, Raphanus, Rorippa and Sinapis 6 ), Cicer,
Lathyrus (only those in Gene Pools (GP) 1b and 2 and
Taxon Groups (TG) 1b and 2 – see Maxted et al. 2006),
Lens, wheat complex (Agropyron and Elymus 7 ), and Vicia
(GP1b, TG1b, GP2, TG2 and four species for which
data were readily available). Lathyrus and Vicia species
were limited to the close wild relatives only, due to the
large number of species included in these genera.
Fifty-two of the forage species listed in Annex I of the
ITPGRFA are native to Europe. These were all included
for assessment as their continued existence in the wild is
important for the future of these crops; thus, knowing
their conservation status in the wild is important to
inform conservation planning. In addition, all Medicago
species native to Europe were included on the basis of
data availability.
This selection process concluded with a list of 596 species;
however, subsequently some of these were removed as
they are hybrids. At a later stage in the project, some
additional species were added by experts at a European
CWR Red List workshop; these included five species
in the genus Sinapidendron, which is related to brassica
crops and endemic to the Madeira archipelago, and
some recently described species of Crambe endemic to
the Canary Islands. The final list of CWR species for
assessment comprised 591 species in 25 crop gene pools/
groups (Table 4), 188 of which are endemic to Europe.
Twenty-four of these species are also included in either
annexes of the EU Habitats Directive or of the Bern
Convention that were assessed as part of the European
Red List initiative. It is also important to note that a
further 634 of the species in the policy list are included in
the CWR Catalogue for Europe and the Mediterranean
6 Brassica spp. are included in the high priority human food crop list.
7 Triticum, Aegilops and Secale spp. are included in the high priority human food crop list.
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