Saving the Future with Seeds

Saving the Future with Seeds The world’s plant species are under sustained threat and biodiversity is being lost at a rate that has defined the times as an extinction era. Seed banks, that collect, preserve and research seeds from all around the world may provide the ultimate backup plan for our food security, natural resources and rewilding projects during the challenging times ahead. Richard Forsyth asks Dr Aisyah Faruk, Conservation Partnership Coordinator at Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank, about the bank’s vital work in preservation.

EU Research: Is the seed bank now more important than ever as we lose biodiversity? Are you saving plant species from extinction?

Dr Alsyah Faruk: Seed banking has always been an important aspect of plant conservation. Throughout human history, people have saved seeds of crops and culturally important plants, but in recent years, we have found that seed banking is increasingly becoming a key tool to mitigate against the loss of wild species and overall biodiversity.

With two in five plant species now estimated to be at risk of extinction, we need to utilise all the tools we have to ensure this rather grim prediction doesn’t hold true.

EUR: What are the rarest seeds you have? Do you have examples of seeds that really are precious to preserve?

Dr Faruk: We hold seeds from 190 countries. They have been collected from the Arctic to the Antarctic, from sea level to over 5000 metres above mean sea level (masl), and from pretty much every habitat between these extremes. The rarest seeds that we hold is hard to define – we do hold seeds from eight species that are now extinct in the wild, making them very rare indeed. We have focused on collecting seeds from threatened species, and those from useful plants – that could be related to crops, medicinal plants, fibre and fuel plants, culturally important species etc.

Some of our collections are from species newly described for science e.g. Ternstroemia guineensis from the Southern Kounounkan Platear in Guinea where 169 mature shrubs and trees were encountered, or Spathoglottis jetsuniae found on limestone outcrops in Bhutan.

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“With two in five plant species now estimated to be at risk of extinction, we need to utilise all the tools we have to ensure this rather grim prediction doesn’t hold true.”

EU Research

“Some are from very ancient species e.g. Wollemia nobilis (Wollemi pine) which has survived since the time of the dinosaurs, or Pinus longaeva (Bristlecone pine) which includes the oldest tree on Earth, Methuselah, more than 4800 years old.”

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Some are from very ancient species e.g. Wollemia nobilis (Wollemi pine) which has survived since the time of the dinosaurs, or Pinus longaeva (Bristlecone pine) which includes the oldest tree on Earth, Methuselah, more than 4800 years old. We hold some symbolic collections, for example, seeds provided by Green Legacy Hiroshima from trees that survived the atomic bomb dropped on the city in the Second World War. All of the seeds we hold are really precious to preserve and you never know when the collection that came in today will be needed to help restore an ecosystem, or to help provide solutions to global challenges such as food security. As we work with wild species, many of the plants that we conserve have never been studied. Our seed collections can be used for research, to increase our understanding of the properties of the plant that help it survive in its environment, or that generate traits of use to humans.

EUR: Are seeds regularly extracted for emergency use when crops fail and for bio-engineering?

Dr Faruk: Depending on the agreement with the donating organisation, the collection at the MSB is indeed extracted for a

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variety of uses. For example, Marasmodes undulata is a shrub in the daisy family, it is classified as Critically Endangered as it is only known from one site. At last monitoring, only three plants were present and funding was received from the Mohamed Bin Zayd Species Conservation Fund (MBZSCF) to help save this species from extinction. Tragically the site was then burned, leaving no plants in the wild. However, seeds from this species had been stored at the MSB in the UK. Seeds were sent back to South Africa where they were sown and monitored for germination. They did germinate, and the plants are now being grown at both Kirstenbosch and Stellenbosch botanic gardens. The project aims to restore the site where an additional 22 threatened species also occur. Numerous field trips have taken place to collect seeds and cutting material. They will be used to restore degraded sections of the site and to create awareness with the community around the project.

EUR: What is the most common reason seeds are stored with you?

Dr Faruk: Each donating organisation is unique and so is our relationship with them, making the reasons behind each batch of seeds sent, different from one another. However, the most common reason seeds are stored with us is as a duplicate collection, a safeguard or insurance policy in case anything happens to the original collection, which is typically kept in the country of origin. Every donating organisation has a say on how they would like their seeds to be treated, what the seeds can or can’t be used for, and by whom.

There are some species where their seeds are not suitable for conventional seed banking, which are known as ‘recalcitrant’ seeds.

Many tropical species, like dipterocarps, and even some temperate species, like oaks, have recalcitrant seeds, which makes them very difficult to conserve long-term. The preservation of these seeds typically requires the use of cryopreservation, which can be difficult to maintain for some seed banks. Looking into the future, we want to ensure that no species is left unprotected, so we will be working to enhance our capability to conserve some of these difficult to bank species.

EUR: Do you think seed banks could save the world one day?

Dr Faruk: I think so. In recent years more people are witnessing the devastating effects of climate change, from severe droughts and floods heavily impacting food security in many parts of the world, and thereby contributing towards greater political and economic instability. One way of building in resilience into our current food system is to use crop wild relatives (CWRs). CWRs are wild relatives of plants that hold a greater genetic diversity than their domesticated cousins. These have the potential to build adaptive traits against an increasingly changing environment, battle disease and/or increase productivity and nutrition. Unfortunately, despite the potential of CWRs, they are underused and many are threatened in the same way other wild species are. The MSB and our global partnership led the collecting and conservation

phase of the Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change project, a 10 year project funded by the Norwegian Government, aiming to collect and conserve wild plant relatives of 29 important crop plants to build resilience into the global food system in the face of a changing climate. Collectively, we have banked approximately 4,000 collections of 200 species of crop wild relatives. Seeds are despatched to pre-breeding institutions around the world to be used in trait analysis, growing experiments and seed production.

We have barely scratched the surface on the potential of plants to humanity. Not only those with direct uses, like food and medicines, but plants that function as key to maintaining healthy ecosystems, and those that promote greater wellbeing. Seeds that are currently in seed banks, or are targeted for collection in the coming years, could hold the key to preserving life and the livelihood of many communities across the world.

EUR: You are the biggest seed bank in the world. Can you give me some stats on what that means?

Dr Faruk: For wild species yes, we have around 97,599 collections of seeds from 190 different countries and territories.

This is made up of approximately 40,017 different plant species from 6,146 genera and 350 plant families (numbers extracted on 30th December 2021).

EUR: Can you describe the seed bank and what it’s like to work there?

Dr Faruk: The MSB is a built for purpose seed bank opened in 2000 and houses an underground seed vault that is floodproof, bomb-proof, radiationproof and has the capacity to hold up to three quarters of the world’s flora.

It has cleaning and research laboratories that the general public can view behind glass, so it is definitely worth a visit if you would like to learn more about what we do and see the seed bank staff in action!

However, the MSB is much more than just a building. It also represents a global network for biodiversity conservation, with over 260 partnerships with institutions from 97 countries and territories across Africa, the Americas, Australia, Europe and the Middle East. Partners range from universities and botanic gardens, to government institutions and more. Since 2013, we’ve helped with the development of seven new, international seed banks, where facilities vary from basic to state of the art. Crucial to our work is to provide a platform of knowledge exchange, giving access to key resources and training on conserving seeds of wild plant species globally. Additionally, the partnership is at the heart of what we do, so a lot goes into supporting them in conserving their unique plant species diversity. So, day-to-day work can be extremely varied, from being in front of the computer delivering training to participants across Australasia, to collecting seeds with partners in the mountains of Georgia, to receiving a batch of seeds from partners in Spain at the MSB and troubleshooting key equipment in Armenia.

Thank you to Dr Aisyah Faruk and Heather McLeod for your support with this feature.

“We have barely scratched the surface on the potential of plants to humanity. Not only those with direct uses, like food and medicines, but plants that function as key to maintaining healthy ecosystems, and those that promote greater wellbeing.”

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