The borderlands are home to a number of plant relatives of modern cultivated crops, including grapes, squash, potato, chiles, tepary beans, sunflowers, and more. Conserving wild crop relatives in-situ (in the wild) and ex-situ (in nurseries and seed banks) is important for future global food security.
In the spring of 2019 BRN was part of a regional Symposium on Wild Crop Relatives, with a larger goal of raising the profile of the Rock Corral Canyon Wile Chile Botanical Area in the Tumacacori Mountains of southern Arizona. This area is home to the northernmost known population of chiltepins (Capsicum annuum var. glabriusculum), the wild relative of all American chile peppers!