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The authors present the updated results of such census in the Italian Seed Bank Network for native species conservation (RIBES) with an analysis of the contribution to the conservation of the Italian FAO priority CWR. Finally, a national priority list for conservation of CWRs was drawn up and proposed here.

Data of 620 crop wild relatives of species of food and fodder interest listed in the Annex I of the FAO Treaty (FAO, 2001) were collected within the census carried out by ISPRA, the Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, in 2014-2015 in order to quantify the extent of CWR representation in the Italian ex situ collections. According to such census, the RIBES network preserve 37% of the Italian CWRs listed in the FAO Treaty: in 14 out of 16 seed-banks are preserved 6,029 accessions of 229 CWR taxa, belonging to 11 families and 57 genera.

Sandy coastal habitats are among the most vulnerable in the world because of their physicaldynamism, and because they are strongly affected by human activities such as construction of harbours, private and tourism infrastructures, mechanical cleaning of beaches, trampling, pollution and invasion by alien plants (Carboni et al., 2009; Defeo et al., 2009). All these factors of disturbance cause and facilitate habitat fragmentation and degradation processes (Carranzaet al., 2010), and as a result, most coastlines are experiencing accelerated rates of erosion(Defeo et al., 2009). The destruction of these habitats is strictly linked with the loss of numerous species which are highly specialized for life in these dynamic systems and are found in no other