Kikuyu gazonnant

There are no known threats to this species in its native region. However a disease known in New South Wales (Australia) as Kikuyu Yellows (Verrucalvus flavofaciens), is a major disease of the grass (Mears 1970).

This species' native distribution overlaps with several protected areas in tropical Africa, inferred using GeoCAT (Bachman et al. 2011) and so passive conservation is presumed in this area. However, there is no evidence of active management or monitoring of the subpopulations.

The National Plant Germplasm System holds forty-one germplasm accessions of this species, however only one accession is reported to have been collected in the species' native range. Sixty-one accessions are recorded in Genesys (Genesys 2017), only three are from its native range. More ex-situ collections are needed to ensure that representative samples from its native range are available for utilization, as well as backup in case of future threats to subpopulations.

According to Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI 2013) this species is in only one living collection in one botanical garden worldwide, at Endebess, Kenya, although the size of the collections are not detailed in this resource.

The genus Pennisetum (syn. Cenchrus) is listed in Annex I of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) which aims to guarantee sustainable agriculture and food security through the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, as well as ensuring the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of their use (FAO 2009).

As part of the Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change, Crop Wild Relative project (Dempewolf 2014), seed is being collected in Kenya and stored ex situ in the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership, Kew.