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  • From: "Doreen Howard" <doreenh@ticon.net>
  • To: <nafex@egroups.com>
  • Subject: Re: [nafex] UK saving seed
  • Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 20:28:18 -0500

I talked with Sir Geoffrey Lewis, the curator of the herbarium at the Royal
Botanical Gardens at Kew about three years ago about this Millennium Seed
Bank project. He was in Houston to introduce the "Back to the Amazon" photo
collection by Margaret Mees and to raise money for the MSB. What the people
at Kew are trying to do is to collect and catalog all plant material on the
planet. A very ambitious project, but a necessary one due to the
acceleration of climate change. They have started with the UK, European
continent and were planning collecting trips into the near East in 1997.
They have also contacted and formed partnerships with such seed preservation
organizations as Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, IA. If you are interested
in MSB, go to the Royal Botanical Gardens web site. I don't have the URL,
but you can use any search engine to find it. Or search for Millennium Seed
Bank project.
Doreen Howard

-----Original Message-----
From: victoria l. caron <vicaron@gis.net>
To: nafex@egroups.com <nafex@egroups.com>
Date: Saturday, August 19, 2000 9:14 AM
Subject: [nafex] UK saving seed


>Thought this was a meaningful project that could well become cooperative
>worldwide. ...............vic
>
>
>August 19, 2000
>
> Noah's Ark for Plants Sets Sail
>
>
> The seed bank is a repository for future generations
>
> By environment correspondent Alex Kirby
> A visionary attempt to save many of the world's endangered
>plants is to
> open in the United Kingdom at the end of August.
>
> It is the Millennium Seed Bank (MSB), one of the largest
>international
> conservation projects ever undertaken.
>
> It aims to have saved the seeds of more than 24,000 species by
>2010, a
> tenth of the global seed-bearing flora.
>
> The bank has already collected seeds from almost all the 1,400
>or so British
> species suitable for inclusion.
>
> Extinction threatens more than 300 UK wild plants, and a quarter
>of the
> world's plants could be condemned to vanish by 2050.
>
> Cold and dry
>
> The MSB is an initiative of the UK's Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
>But it is
> housed, not at Kew Gardens in London, but at its rural
>equivalent,
> Wakehurst Place in southern England.
>
> Seeds arriving at the MSB - it already has more than 250
>million, from
> almost 5,000 species - are first dried in conditions of low
>humidity.
>
> Hugh Pritchard takes extinction seriously
>
> After several weeks their moisture level has fallen to 5%,
> which means they will last much longer - for about 200
> years, the Bank's designers hope.
>
> They are then cleaned and checked, with a sample of
> about 50 of each species being X-rayed for quality.
>
> Each batch is tested for germination in dishes of agar
> jelly. The test will be repeated every decade.
>
> Finally, they are placed in ordinary glass jars and stored in
>three
> underground vaults at temperatures of -20 degrees C. The number
>of seeds
> kept in a single jar is as great as the number of people in many
>modern
> cities.
>
> As a precaution, a back-up seed collection is to be stored in
>Scotland.
>
> Securing food
>
> Most of the seeds from abroad are from dryland species. The
>project leaders
> say "off-site" conservation like seed banking can contribute
>more "where
> land degradation is brought about by climatic effects overlaying
>
> unsustainable land use by indigenous people".
>
> They estimate that more than 60,000 sq kms are lost to deserts
>every year.
> Dr Hugh Pritchard, head of research at the MSB, told BBC News
>Online: "The
> drylands are fundamentally important to the sustenance of
>something like
> 20% of the world's population."
>
> Collecting seeds in Burkina Faso
>
> The MSB, which is costing more than £80 m,
>is planned to
> be a centre of expertise, collaborating with
>the countries
> from which the seeds originate.
>
> The project aims to help other countries to
>set up their
> own seed banks, and plans to keep "a
>substantial
> proportion" of all the seeds collected in
>their countries of
> origin.
>
> Dr Pritchard says the prospect of extinction is real enough for
>many plants.
> "I think the threat is probably worse than we imagine.
>
> Untapped potential
>
> "If we think about population expansion and the pressure that
>will put on
> natural areas, those areas will decrease. That has to mean we're
>going to
> lose species. Most of the models do predict tremendous risk to
>plant
> species.
>
> "Many of the species that we currently conserve we perhaps don't
>have an
> immediate use for. But something like 30% of the medicines we
>use
> currently are based on products or chemicals which have been
>extracted
> from plants.
>
> "In the future, if we are to find new remedies, we need to have
>access to
> this cornucopia of plants worldwide."
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>


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  • [nafex] UK saving seed, victoria l. caron, 08/19/2000
    • <Possible follow-up(s)>
    • Re: [nafex] UK saving seed, Doreen Howard, 08/19/2000

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