Back to the wild to improve our crops: Success stories and lessons learnt

To address genetic vulnerability and maximize the genetic gain of modern crop cultivars in the era of climate change, one of the approaches is to utilize new and diverse sources of variations. The crop wild relatives (CWRs) continue to evolve under diverse natural conditions and thus have developed many useful traits, such as high levels of resistance/tolerance to biotic/abiotic stresses. Utilizing these CWRs in crop improvement programs can enhance the productivity and resilience of cultivated crops. Systematic and focused pre-breeding using CWRs at ICRISAT led to the creation of new variability for further use in breeding programs for improving mandate crops such as pigeonpea, chickpea, peanut, and pearl millet. Development of pre-breeding lines with improved pod borer tolerance in pigeonpea, late leaf spot resistance in peanut, blast resistance in pearl millet, and botrytis grey mould resistance in chickpea are some of the successful examples of using CWRs in crop improvement programs. The Crop Wild Relatives Project (Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: Collecting, Protecting, and Preparing Crop Wild Relatives) [http://cwr.croptrust.org/] and the Biodiversity for Opportunities, Livelihoods, and Development (BOLD) Project [https://bold.croptrust.org/] brought together researchers, plant breeders, and farmers to collect, conserve, and use the wild relatives of priority crops to help future-proof the world’s food supplies. Several success stories and impacts have already been generated. The pre-breeding lines developed under these projects can be readily utilized in breeding programs to develop new climate-resilient high-yielding cultivars with a broad genetic base. Under the BOLD Rice project in Vietnam, for example, farmers organized in seed clubs are evaluating rice pre-breeding lines derived from CWR in on-farm trials. The first CWR-derived varieties are currently being released.