Welcome! Here we provide conservation gap analyses for a subset of native North American fruit and nut tree taxa that are traditional foods and/or wild relatives of important agricultural crops, also known as crop wild relatives.

These gap analyses include metrics for both ex situ conservation (presence in botanic gardens and genebanks) and in situ conservation (presence in protected areas). Of the 95 taxa we analyzed, 46% are urgent priority for conservation, 53% are high priority, and 1% are low priority. These results highlight the vital need to increase conservation efforts for these important taxa. This includes increasing their representation in botanic gardens and genebanks as well as enhancing their protection in natural habitats.


Taxon-level conservation summaries
Summary figure of all conservation gap analysis results
References, resources, and additional data



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This work was led by Emily Beckman Bruns, Colin Khoury, Nan McCarry, Abby Meyer, Ray Mims, and Emily Warschefsky, and funded by the United States Botanic Garden. Emily Beckman Bruns was also supported by NSF ABI grant #1759759. Additional thanks to San Diego Botanic Garden, Botanic Gardens Conservation International - US, The Morton Arboretum, and Missouri Botanical Garden for providing organizational support.

March 2023

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