Millennium Seed Bank gets billionth deposit

Now if we can save the bees, we might not starve.---BBB

Millennium Seed Bank gets billionth deposit
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Published: 26 April 2007
Independent UK

The Chancellor, Gordon Brown, will today bank the billionth seed at the largest plantcollection of its kind in the world.

At a ceremony in No 11 Downing Street, the seed of anendangered African bamboo will be presented to Mr Brown to mark a remarkable stage in a remarkable project - the Millennium Seed Bank of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Regarded as a "Noah's Ark for plants," the seed bank, based at Wakehurst Place in Sussex since 2000, is one of the world's most ambitious conservation schemes. It is also becoming an enormously important resource for poorer countries where valuable wild plants are becoming scarcer, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

The bank already holds the seeds of more than 18,000 wild species from 126 countries - including 88 per cent of the UK's flora - and by 2010 it should hold the seeds of 30,000, or 10 per cent of the world's flowering plants. The target for 2020 is 75,000 species, or a quarter of the total.

The project has the potential to eventually store seeds from up to half of the world's wild plant species, with each of the seeds having the potential to become a plant. Kew is working with more than 100 partner organisations in 50 countries to form a global insurance policy against the extinction of plants in their natural environments.

In sub-Saharan Africa, Kew is working with agricultural seed banks in 29 countries to develop methods that will enable the sustained use of about 220 plant species that are important to local communities.

The billionth seed comes from the African bamboo, Oxytenanthera abyssinica, and was taken from Mali, in west Africa, by Sidi Sanojo, a seed collector. It will be presented to Mr Brown today in a special jar by Matthew Jackson, the son of the head of Wakehurst Place, Andy Jackson.

This bamboo is the most hardy of the three African bamboo species and has valuable characteristics: it lives on poor soils; is fast-growing; drought-resistant; and survives fire in its natural habitat. Within Mali and other sub-Saharan African counties, it is used for house construction, furniture, basket weaving and wine making.

The species is now a priority for conservation for several reasons: over-harvesting has led to it becoming endangered in Mali; its natural habitat is under increasing threat, and it sets seed only once every seven years. Like many bamboo species, the flowering and fruiting of O. abyssinica is synchronised across the region, so that all the plants flower, fruit and then die back within a single year. The phenomenon has led to the superstition in Mali that the fruiting of the bamboo is a bad omen for kings, conquerors and chiefs.

Botanical scientists have known for years that many seeds can be stored for a very long time - in extreme cases, hundreds of years - and still be able to germinate in the right conditions. At the Millennium Seed Bank thousands of seeds are banked for every species collected and each set is tested to make sure the seeds will germinate.

The seeds are then made available for research, and for species reintroduction and habitat restoration projects around the world. The seed bank already holds some species that are extinct in the wild.

All life on earth ultimately depends on plants, which are at the base of all eco-systems, but it is now thought that between 60,000 and 100,000 species are under threat from climate change, habitat loss, invasive alien species and exploitation.

The head of the Millennium Seed Bank, Paul Smith, said: "Everyone in the world depends on nature and the ecosystem services such as clean air and water to provide the conditions for decent, healthy and secure life.

"Plant diversity is a vital part of the system on which we depend. The need for the kind of insurance policy the Millennium Seed Bank provides has never been greater."