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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