Wild Relatives are Plant Breeders Insurance Policy for Food Security

Feb 14, 2023

Wild relatives help preserve diversity for future plant breeding needs.

Crop wild relatives have evolved over millions of years, adapting to the environments in which they live in, making each population unique. When it comes to plant breeding, they’re an important source of genes to manage future stressors that face crop plants. This includes drought, new fungal pathogens and additional challenges that the world must combat due to climate change.

“When you consider plants collected from different areas in the world, they have evolved to adapt to that specific environment. That’s what makes them really useful for plant breeders,” says Alan Humphries, curator of the Australian Pastures Genebank, on the Feb. 8 episode of Seed Speaks.

Wild relatives have proven just how valuable they can be time and time again in the past. For example, the U.S. wild grape relative is utilized as a root stock to offer resistance to phylloxera for cultivated grapes. Lettuce’s Lactuca serriola, also known as prickly lettuce, provides resistance to downy mildew and were used to breed resistant varieties of head lettuce. Another wild species of lettuce, Lactuca virosa, gives cultivated lettuce resistance to lettuce aphid, according to Barbara Hellier, horticulture crops and Beta curator with the Western Regional Plant Introduction Station.

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Video: From Conventional to Regenerative: Will Groeneveld’s Journey Back to the Land

"You realize you've got a pretty finite number of years to do this. If you ever want to try something new, you better do it."

That mindset helped Will Groeneveld take a bold turn on his Alberta grain farm. A lifelong farmer, Will had never heard of regenerative agriculture until 2018, when he attended a seminar by Kevin Elmy that shifted his worldview. What began as curiosity quickly turned into a deep exploration of how biology—not just chemistry—shapes the health of our soils, crops and ecosystems.

In this video, Will candidly reflects on his family’s farming history, how the operation evolved from a traditional mixed farm to grain-only, and how the desire to improve the land pushed him to invite livestock back into the rotation—without owning a single cow.

Today, through creative partnerships and a commitment to the five principles of regenerative agriculture, Will is reintroducing diversity, building soil health and extending living roots in the ground for as much of the year as possible. Whether it’s through intercropping, zero tillage (which he’s practiced since the 1980s) or managing forage for visiting cattle, Will’s approach is a testament to continuous learning and a willingness to challenge old norms.

Will is a participant in the Regenerative Agriculture Lab (RAL), a social innovation process bringing together producers, researchers, retailers and others to co-create a resilient regenerative agriculture system in Alberta. His story highlights both the potential and humility required to farm with nature, not against it.