MONTEVIDEO (Sputnik) — On Monday, the Nature Plants journal published a research article devoted to the global conservation priorities for CRW, stressing that their conservation status and availability for utilization were a concern, in particular, in the Middeteranian and Southwestern Asia.
"We have found that in places like Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts may threaten crop wild relatives originating in those regions," Castaneda-Alvarez, one of the authors of the article, said.
She explained that the wild relatives of almonds, oats, cherries, barley and wheat are threatened in the regions, which also may influence the stability of global food processing.
A crop wild relative is a wild plant closely related to a domesticated plant, which constitutes an important resource for improving agricultural production and for maintaining sustainable agro-ecosystems. Wild crop species often have valuable characteristics as tolerance to disease or drought, so their loss will limit the ability to adapt to high temperatures, more saline soils and other circumstances that can be attributed to climate change.
The situation in Iraq deteriorated as the United States withdrew its troops in 2011, as local militant groups tried to take up arms against the central Iraqi government.
Currently, vast territories in Iraq and neighboring Syria have been occupied by the notorious Islamic State militant group, which is outlawed in Russia and many other countries. The Daesh is known for its excessive brutality, beheadings of hostages and terrorist attacks carried out by Daesh affiliates worldwide.
