Crop landraces inventory for Portugal

Abstract

AbstractThe threats to agrobiodiversity ultimately affect our future food security. Countries bonded to national or international biodiversity conservation legislation should conserve and sustainably use their agrobiodiversity. Landraces are a key element of agrobiodiversity which is largely endangered due to lack of their systematic conservation, and partially due to obstacles in developing inventories which may be assigned to the difficulties in applying a standard landrace’ definition and to complications associated with nomenclature (synonyms/homonyms). Effective national conservation of landraces can be best achieved with a comprehensive inventory. In this paper, we developed a comprehensive inventory of food and other Portuguese agricultural landraces by surveying literature, local media, and farms. Farms were selected based on knowledge of experts and using an ecogeographic diversity approach based on Geographic Information Systems. We compiled 14,813 records of 7492 different landraces. Grape vine (Vitis vinifera L.), common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.), and maize (Zea mays L. subsp. mays) have the highest number of landraces in Portugal according with the gathered data. Bragança and Faro are the districts with more records of landraces. The landrace inventory for Portugal that we developed is a first iteration of such kind and should be updated systematically.