Prototype Biodiversity Digital Twin: Crop Wild Relatives Genetic Resources for Food Security

Amidst population growth and climate-driven crop stresses, ensuring food security demands innovative strategies. Crop wild relatives (CWR), wild plants in the same genus as the crop, offer novel genetic resources crucial for enhancing crop resilience. Here, we introduce a prototype digital twin (pDT) to aid in searching and utilising CWR genetic resources. Leveraging the MoDGP (Modeling the Germplasm of Interest) tool, the pDT enables mapping geographic areas where stress-tolerant CWR populations can be found. With its graphical user interface, it offers flexibility in selecting genetic resources from CWR tailored to enhance resilience of various crops against diverse stress factors.