Gardening and farming are challenging in the best of times-
and even more so with a changing climate. In this presentation, we'll learn why the wild and weedy relatives of crops hold the key helping crops resist pests and disease, and tolerate drought and other climate challenges.
Scientists conserve crop wild relatives in gene banks and elsewhere, but we’ll learn about many you can find in your native plant nursery, in natural areas, or even growing as weeds in your yard.
In this talk, we’ll look at domesticated crops and their wild relatives as all part of a process across a spectrum. We’ll also learn about new crops that breeders are working on to bring us into more regenerative perennial polycultural systems which provide ecosystem services while feeding us.
Meet Your Presentor: Nan McCarry
Nan McCarry is an academic researcher at heart, collaborating with scientists across the country on the conservation of "plant genetic resources," which you will learn about in this talk. She also enjoys how this work intersects with her gardening, sourcing seeds, and work at Watermark Woods Native Plants in Hamilton, Virginia. Nan received her master’s degree in Geography from the University of Texas at Austin, doing her thesis research in Guatemala on traditional home gardens. She has been converting three acres of lawn to native food forest. She is a member of the Virginia Native Plant Society, the Society for Ethnobotany and Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy. Nan is writing a book on plant domestication, or how our crops evolved to be our crops, a topic she will touch on in this talk.
