Crop wild relatives are important for agriculture because they contain high levels of genetic diversity and grow in a wide range of habitats and environments. Colombia has the largest number of cacao crop wild relatives in the world, including different species of the genus Theobroma and its sister genus Herrania. This paper investigates diversity and distribution of cacao crop wild relatives in Colombia using species occurrences extracted from museum and herbarium archives, fieldwork collections gathered on recently conducted expeditions and species distribution modelling. A total of 211 botanical collections comprising 174 samples of Theobroma species, and 37 samples of Herrania species were collected on expeditions to Caguán–Caquetá in the upper Amazon basin and La Victoria, in the Pacific region of central Choco. These collections represent 22 taxa of cacao crop wild relatives. On the Chocó expedition, we reported the highest richness and endemism, where seven taxa of Theobroma and three of Herrania were found within a radius of 10 km, which has never been recorded before. On the Amazon expedition, we found an abundance of wild populations of Theobroma cacao on the river banks. We estimated that 95% of the most suitable environments for wild cacao in Colombia are in unprotected areas. Our study reveals that species diversity and endemism of cacao crop wild relatives in Colombia is under sampled and distributional patterns are incomplete. Based on the findings of our study, we propose a conservation strategy that consists of further expeditions to collect herbarium and germplasm samples, and habitat protection of cacao crop wild relatives in Colombia.

作物野生近缘种对农业很重要，因为它们具有很高的遗传多样性，并且可以在广泛的栖息地和环境中生长。哥伦比亚拥有世界上数量最多的可可豆野生近缘种，包括可可属（Theobroma）属及其姊妹黑兰属（Herrania）的不同物种。本文利用从博物馆和植物标本室档案中提取的物种发生情况，最近进行的考察中收集的田野调查资料和物种分布模型，研究了哥伦比亚可可豆野生近缘种的多样性和分布。总共211个植物集合，包括174个可可瘤物种样品和37个黑拉尼亚样品这些物种是在远亚马逊河盆地的Caguán–Caquetá和Choco中部太平洋地区的La Victoria的远征中收集的。这些集合代表22种可可作物野生近缘种。在乔科（Chocó）探险队中，我们报告了最高的丰富度和地方性，在 10公里半径范围内发现了七个可可瘤 和三个 黑拉尼亚的分类群 ，这是以前从未有过的记录。在亚马逊探险队中，我们发现了可可可可的野生种群在河岸上。我们估计，哥伦比亚95％最适合野生可可的环境都处于未保护的区域。我们的研究表明，哥伦比亚可可作物野生近缘种的物种多样性和特有度尚处于采样状态，分布模式不完整。根据我们的研究结果，我们提出了一项保护策略，该策略包括进一步的探险活动，以收集标本室和种质标本，以及对哥伦比亚可可作物野生近缘种的栖息地进行保护。