Introduction

All our modern crops have been developed from wild plants. The domestication of a plant passes through stages from intensified usage of the wild plant to the development of a domesticate so dependent on Man that it cannot survive in the wild. All stages are seen in the crop complement of Ethiopia. There are many wild plants which are used for food, particularly in times of food shortage such as the period between seed sowing and harvest. It is hardly surprising that the majority of such plants are those used as leafy vegetables, followed by those with edible fruits, tubers or roots. Another example is the grass, Snowdenia polystachya (Fresen.) Pilg., whose seeds are collected and used in a similar way to teff. The following account includes only those that are related to domesticates. Examples of semi-domesticated plants are Avena abyssinica and Coccinia abyssinica, both of which are discussed further below. There are also wild plants now attracting attention as potential crops, for example Vernonia galamensis (Cass.) Less. (Perdue, 1988) and Cordeauxia edulis (Hemsl.) (Polhill & Thulin, 1989). Ethiopia also has fully domesticated endemic crops, the best known being teff, Eragrostis tef and ensete, Ensete ventricosum. For fully domesticated plants the wild species from which the crop developed has in some cases been identified; in others it seems to have disappeared after the plant was domesticated.

Both environmental degradation and modern agriculture are putting traditional crops and their wild relatives at risk.