Abstract

Harvesting from wild plants, especially from those having medicinal uses, is causing loss of genetic diversity and habitat degradation. However, a large amount of the wild plants is harvested by poor households. Both in situ and ex situ conservation have disadvantages, such as large investment but little reward for indigenous inhabitants. Cultivated populations have relative high genetic diversity of their wild ancestors, which can realize on-farm conservation and local cultivar breeding in future. On-farm conservation proposed here includes genetic diversity conservation and sustainable utilization for family income under special domestication pattern. The company and farmers pattern can reduce the economic pressure for local government and realize the genetic diversity conservation of local species, as well as the sustainable utilization under the pressure of local economy at the same time.

Key words: On-farm conservation, domestic cultivation, genetic diversity, endangered plants, sustainable utilization.