The objective of the project Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: Collecting, Protecting and Preparing Crop Wild Relatives is to collect many of the most important species of crop wild relatives, ensure their long-term conservation, and facilitate their use in breeding new, improved crops. The project is supported by the Government of Norway.

Crop wild relatives contain an incredible amount of genetic diversity, usually much more than is found in the crops to which they are related, and as a group represent an invaluable resource for crop improvement.

Many of their unique characteristics show particular promise for helping to adapt agricultural systems to climate change. For example, many crop wild relatives are drought-tolerant, as is the wild barley species Hordeum spontaneum.