The Need for Germplasm Conservation in Wild Cassava

An urgent effort to conserve genetic resources of wild cassava is badly needed. Occurrence of wild cassava species in their natural habitats is diminishing day after day and a number of species are on the verge of extinction. Trials of collecting these wild species from their natural habitats were carried out. Frequency of their occurrence in these habitats is reported.

By experimenting different ways of preserving these species, it is found that transplanting whole plants is the most efficient method of reproducing the sub-shruby species. Grafting scions of wild shruby species onto stocks of cassava is found to be another potential way of germplasm conservation.