What Is Seed Stock?

The global seed bank is located on the Svalbard Islands, Norway, more than 1,000 kilometers from the North Pole. The seed bank aims to keep various plant seeds around the world in underground warehouses in order to prevent species extinction caused by the rapid decline of global species.

International Seed Bank

Later this month in Norway

United Kingdom: both seed banks and "frozen ark"

Before the completion of the Arctic Dome, the British Wickhurst Millennium Seed Bank was undoubtedly the most famous of the Ark. This seed bank has cooperated with many countries and regions, sending thousands of rigorously trained seed collectors to look for collecting endangered, locally unique and economically valuable plant seeds everywhere. The collected seeds were finally sent to the Wickhurst Millennium Seed Bank in the south of England. There, the seeds go through multiple processes such as dehydration, screening, X-ray irradiation and germination inspection, and are then packed into large glass bottles. It was eventually sent to an underground storage room at minus 20 degrees Celsius, resistant to bomb attacks and radiation. At present, the seed bank has stored about 300 million plant seeds, and every 10 years, staff will thoroughly inspect and process the stock seeds. Just in case, the same set of seeds is kept in Scotland.
Mike, the international coordinator responsible for collecting seeds in the Americas, said that collecting seeds is the best and most feasible way to conserve large numbers of species because these collected seeds can still germinate and grow after being stored for hundreds of years. Scientists believe that the current rapid expansion of the world's population has caused the destruction of many plants' native lands, resulting in species extinction rates 70 times faster than normal. In case some species are extinct, it is hoped that these preserved seeds can serve as "plant safety belts" to avoid the extinction of these species. Wickhurst Millennium Seed Bank also has cooperation with China. In 2004, it signed a 10-year cooperation agreement with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Yunnan Botanical Garden. China ranks third in the world in the number of plant species, with more than 30,000 vascular plants, 50% of which are endemic to China. Chinese scientists have discovered "extinction" for more than 100 years in southwestern Yunnan

International Seed Bank China Seed Bank

On August 22, 2006, RobinProbert, director of the technical training department of the Millennium Seed Bank Project in the United Kingdom, said at the China Botanical Garden Biodiversity Conservation Symposium, "The seed bank that will be completed in Kunming this year will be China's largest seed bank and also a world Class seed bank. "

As one of the backbones of protecting plant diversity in China, the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Botanical Gardens Conservation International jointly hosted this seminar. Li Debao, director of the Kunming Institute of Botany, introduced that the "Southwest Wildlife Germplasm Resource Bank of China", which is about to be completed, is one of the important innovation platforms of the Knowledge Innovation Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The library mainly collects and preserves wild plants, and focuses on the collection and conservation of rare and endangered, endemic, and important economic and scientific values. The seed bank takes Yunnan as a foothold, covers the southwest (including the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau), and radiates to the whole country. It is necessary to build an international wildlife germplasm resource collection and protection platform.

RobinProbert evaluates that the completion of the seed bank will continuously provide germplasm resources and related information and talents for the development of China's biotechnology industry and research in life sciences, and promote the development of China's biotechnology industry and socio-economic development. The Convention and contribute to the effective protection of biological diversity.

The three-day seminar opened in Kunming on August 21, 2006. Thirteen experts and scholars from the United Kingdom, Australia, Israel, and China, and the Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing Botanical Garden, Shanghai Botanical Garden, Hong Kong and Macau, China, etc. More than sixty representatives from botanical gardens, research institutions and universities attended the meeting. ^[2]

International Seed Bank Millennium Seed Bank

The Millennium Seed Bank is one of the Millennium Projects invested by the British Millennium Commission for £ 30 million and a total of £ 80 million was built, so it is called the "Millennium Seed Bank". The purpose of establishing the Millennium Seed Bank in the United Kingdom is to store all of the more than 1,400 species of wild plants in the United Kingdom. Another main purpose is to protect 10% of the world s wild plants from extinction. The Millennium Seed Bank plans to store 24,000 seeds of various wild plants by 2010, which accounts for about one-tenth of the world s wild flora. Scientists estimate that by 2050, there will be more than 300 species of wild plants in the UK and one-quarter of the world's wild plants are threatened with extinction.
The establishment of the Millennium Seed Bank is an initiative to directly support the United Nations Plant Diversity Agreement signed by countries around the world in 1992, and it is also an important measure for environmental protection. Seeds collected from all over the UK or some parts of the world are dried, cleaned and stored in ordinary glass bottles, stored in 3 underground warehouses, and stored in a temperature of minus 20 degrees Celsius.

A spokesman for the Royal Botanic Gardens said that most plant seeds do not look exciting, but they contain genetic information about the next generation of plants and are closely related to the environment in which humans live.