Aim: The conservation and effective use of crop genetic diversity is crucial to overcome challenges related to human nutrition and agricultural sustainability. Farmers’ traditional varieties (“landraces”) are major sources of genetic variation. The degree of representation of crop landrace diversity in ex situ conservation is poorly understood, partly due to a lack of methods that can negotiate both the anthropogenic and environmental determinants of their geographic distributions. Here we describe a novel spatial modeling and...

Perennial grains could simultaneously provide food for humans and a host of ecosystem services, including reduced erosion, minimized nitrate leaching, and increased carbon capture. Yet most of the world’s food and feed is supplied by annual grains. Efforts to domesticate intermediate wheatgrass (Thinopyrumn intermedium, IWG) as a perennial grain crop have been ongoing since the 1980’s. Currently, there are several breeding programs within North America and Europe working toward developing IWG into a viable crop....