A starting point in supporting the in situ conservation of tree commodity crops with extant wild or semi-wild stands is to
attempt to work out what the ‘option value’ of this material is for breeding purposes, although this is difficult because of the many unknowns concerning both the nature of the genetic resource and future breeding requirements. In any case, Hein and Gatzweiler (2006) undertook the exercise for wild coffee based on the need to improve the yields of cultivars, to protect against three major cultivated coffee diseases and to breed some cultivars with lower natural caffeine content. Their analysis, based on a 30 year discounting period, indicated a net present value of wild coffee of 1.5 billion USD at a discount rate of 5%, 420 million USD at a discount rate of 10%. The generation of these figures assumed a 15 year period for a successful breeding programme and a 20% adoption rate for improved cultivar planting. Another assumption is that traits for improvement would be obtained from wild stands rather than existing ex situ field gene bank accessions of coffee, which are maintained in countries such as Brazil (i.e., we do not know to what extent extant wild stands in Ethiopia contain unique genetic resources; Reichhuber and Requate, 2007). Nevertheless, although only approximations, these figures provide a strong justification for the further protection of wild Ethiopian coffee stands and the forest around them, and should support the development of a mechanism that involves growers from elsewhere in the world in supporting such an initiative.