Report of a Spinacia turkestanica collecting expedition to Uzbekistan: Daily itinerary, collected germplasm and data

In 2023 CGN carried out a collecting expedition in Uzbekistan, in close collaboration with its local counterparts. This report provides the results of this collecting expedition, during which 27 seed samples of Spinacia turkestanica were collected. These new accessions will be added to the spinach collection of the CGN. Potentially the majority of S. turkestanica populations in Uzbekistan are under threat as wild spinach can only survive in the margins of fields that are managed through low input farming. However it was possible to find a number of populations, so where the conditions are right there is still enough S. turkestanica present. This means that agriculture hasn’t changed much in certain areas since the previous expedition in 2008. But for how long will this be the case?