4.5. Conservation implications
Successful management of an endangered species often depends on accurate identification of current and future cultivable areas. Thus, we combined genetic diversity and ecological niche modeling to understand the evolutionary dynamics in Kersting’s groundnut species across its cultivated regions. Although the predictive models showed that future climatic conditions will be more favorable to KG production, areas of the Southern-Sudanian and Northern-Guinean zones of Benin were identified as climatically unsuitable for the species and genetic groups. Notwithstanding the above results, this approach may provide a valuable tool for genetic resources managers for implementing collection and conservation strategies of this orphan legume, as sustained by Sohn et al. (2013) in their study on endemic bird in South America. In particular, our suggestion is to focus on the Pop1 with particularly high conservation value. This genetic group is composed mainly of the white landrace mostly preferred, grown and sold by farmers in Benin (Akohouéet al. 2019; Assogba et al.2015). However, the local seed system alone will likely be insufficient to adapt the crop production to changing climate. Formal seeds management efforts can improve the decision-making process that would greatly help in the collection and conservation of those populations at higher risk of extinction but also those that may thrive with climate change. In general, African crop genetic resources conservation is unfortunately poorly supported by National Governments, and material from the regions is not fully represented in the important international genebanks which afford the baseline for sustained public breeding efforts (Burke et al. 2009).