Collecting Mediterranean wild species of the Brassica oleracea group (Brassica sect. Brassica)

Within the framework of the project EUBRASWILD (Capturing Brassica Wild Relatives Diversity in Southeastern Europe), several collecting missions were organized, targeting wild Brassica complex species (2n = 18), belonging to the gene pool of Brassica oleracea L. These crop wild relatives have repeatedly shown their potential to contain useful alleles for biotic and abiotic stress resistance, and nutritional or health-beneficial traits that can be easily intercrossed with the related crop. The missions described in this paper aimed to collect taxa that are poorly represented in public genebanks or databases for long-term conservation. This report describes missions carried out by national teams in Albania, Croatia and Italy (Ponza and Sicily), including highlights of newly discovered locations.