More than
1,700 new plants have been discovered in the past year, including species that
could help provide food in the future, says a report from England.
Among 1,730
new species are five new types of manihot, from Brazil, wild relatives of
cassava, which could help develop varieties of the third-most important food
crop in the tropics that are resilient to drier conditions and disease.
The second
annual State of the World’s Plants from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, also
revealed nine new species of climbing vine Mucuna, used in the treatment of
Parkinson’s disease, have been found.
Plant
breeders can tap into the genes in these discovered plants to move them through
natural breeding programs into high-yielding cropping varieties.
That has,
for example, how Canadian wheat breeders have introduced disease resistance by
crossing with grass ancestors of wheat.
