British Seed Bank Is 'Botanical Seatbelt'
10/3/99
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Title: British Seed Bank Is 'Botanical Seatbelt'
Source: The Associated Press
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: October 3, 1999
Byline: Barbara Martinez
LONDON (AP) - The small flower that lived on the banks of the Slapton
Lea in the southwest English county of Devon slowly faded out until
none were left. But thanks to the Millennium Seed Bank, the
corrigiola litoralis was not lost forever.
Scientists at the bank germinated the seeds, then created a habitat
by the river that would let the flower thrive. And today, thrive it
does.
Roger Smith, the seed bank's director, hopes the taxpayer-funded
project will serve as an impetus for a worldwide movement to save
plant species by storing their seeds.
He likens the bank to a ``botanical seatbelt.''
``If you are unfortunate enough to have a crash, it doesn't have to
be as damaging as it might have been,'' he says.
A $127 million building is at the center of the project. Set to open
next summer in Wakehurst Place in Sussex, south of London, it will
store the seeds of 10 percent of the world's flora and fauna, as well
as those of all f Britain's wild plants.
Smith chose to focus the seed bank's collection efforts on drylands,
which are in jeopardy because of population growth.
About 60 inches of rain falls in drylands annually, about six times
the amount of desert rainfall. But growing populations deplete the
land's resources during dry spells, turning it into a desert-like
habitat.
Smith says he opted to concentrate on drylands because other habitats
can be protected through political efforts.
To save the rainforests, activists can involve local governments in
protecting them from loggers, he notes. But the drylands are being
destroyed by people who have always made their homes there.
``I try to imagine the politician who could sell the slogan `more
species, lower standard of living,''' Smith says wryly.
The seeds collected from the drylands will be dried and then frozen,
a method that Smith says will preserve them for decades, if not
centuries. Seeds can be removed from cold storage and germinated if
they are needed for research or become extinct in the wild.
Although it has a very different purpose than Britain's seed bank,
the National Seed Bank in Fort Collins, Colo., provides a model of
how a species can be protected through such storage.
When the Russian wheat aphid attacked crops in the United States in
the early 1990s, for example, scientists at the National Seed Bank
grew plants from their more than 44,000 varieties of wheat, collected
from countries where the wheat grows naturally.
Eventually, one was found that resisted the aphid. This
characteristic then was bred into U.S.-grown wheat.
Staff at the National Seed Bank go on missions around the world to
gather samples of genetically diverse seed, and now Smith's staff has
begun to do the same.
A recent visitor to the temporary bank at Wakehurst Place would have
seen seeds gathered in Burkina Faso drying in cloth sacks, next to
dried-out samples of the plants they can produce.
The samples will be on display in the seed bank's visitor center,
where researchers at work will be visible through glass laboratory
walls.
Underground will be a library, a lecture room and accommodations for
visiting researchers, along with cold storage rooms that can hold
seeds from more than 25,000 plant species.
Research leader Loren Wiesner notes that while groups have collected
wild seeds to protect particular species, no one has ever tried to
freeze-dry an entire habitat.
By going places seed collectors have never gone before, to drylands
on five continents, Smith says he hopes to raise awareness so more
people join in the fight to save plants.
``It's very tricky, but doable, I think,'' he says. ``Biologists
started this fuss. They need to develop a solution.''