• important in local consumption and production systems;
• highly adapted to agroecological niches and marginal areas;
• represented by ecotypes or landraces;
• cultivated and utilized drawing on indigenous knowledge;
• characterized by fragile or non-existent seed supply systems;
• hardly represented in ex situ gene banks and
• ignored by policy makers and excluded from research and development agendas (Padulosi and Hoeschle-Zeledon, 2004).
Moreover, the limited information available on many important and frequently basic aspects of neglected and underutilized crops hinders their development and sustainable conservation (Hammer et al., 2001