A Nordic-Baltic seminar on "Conservation of wild relatives of cultivated plants" was held at the Finnish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry on 23-24 October. The project is coordinated by the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre NordGen.
A total of 41 specialists in the field attended the seminar. From Estonia, Külli Annamaa, Head of the Genebank of the Centre of Estonian Rural Research and Knowlege, and Rene Aavola, breeder of forage grasses, participated.

The seminar focused on the long-term conservation of and access to wild crop relatives. "Crop wild relatives are one of the most important means of ensuring food security in a changing climate, but at the same time they are increasingly threatened in the wild. It is therefore necessary to take measures to conserve them for future generations," said Anna Palmé, Senior Research Fellow at NordGen.