Spring 2008 at Wakehurst Place

HIGHTLIGHTS

Looking Forward to the Next 10 Years

The Millennium Seed Bank Project (MSBP) currently has two major aims:

• To collect and conserve seed from 10% of the world’s flora

• To build capacity in seed conservation worldwide

Next year, in 2009, the MSPB, now comprising more than 100 institutions in 50 countries, will achieve those aims on time and within budget.

In the 10 years since the MSBP started, climate change has joined habitat destruction and over-exploitation as a new threat to plant diversity and human livelihoods. Plant diversity is crucial to human adaptation to climate change. Globally, 80% of our plant-based food intake comes from just 12 domesticated plant species - eight cereals and four tubers. Although these crop species and their cultivars are safely banked, can we continue to rely on such a tiny fraction of edible plant diversity for all our future needs? There are 30,000 species of edible plants recorded but the vast majority are not conserved in seed banks.

The MSBP’s next target is to secure in safe storage 25% of the world’s plant species by 2020 and to enable the use of that seed in agriculture, horticulture, forestry and habitat repair. We must give our children every opportunity, and that means safeguarding and passing on our biological inheritance intact. We need your support to make this happen. If you would like to help this vital conservation project, please make a donation by e-mailing Jane Harris or phoning her on 020 8332 3202 or 5922.

COUNTDOWN 2010

Target: 24,200 species

Progress to date:

17,298 species banked
72% target reached
1.143 billion seeds banked
126 countries represented
96% UK flora banked

Plant ‘Lost’ for 100 Years Found in China

Paraisometrum mileense, thought to be extinct, has been rediscovered in Yunnan by MSB partner, the Kunming Institute of Botany, which sponsors the Chinese national seed collecting network. Dr Shui Yuming and his students found P. mileense during a seed collecting trip, identifying it against a specimen placed in the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, in 1906, by a French missionary who had been the last person to see the plant in the wild.

A species of the Gesneriaceae family, P. mileense is a limestone loving plant, endemic to Yunnan where its habitats are nutrient-poor and vulnerable. P. mileense is also threatened by human activity from local settlements in the region.

Seeds have now been stored at the Germplasm Bank of Wild Species in Kunming, established by the Institute of Botany in collaboration with the MSB which was involved in the design of the building, gave technical advice on equipping this international standard gene bank and will provide ongoing support and training. A duplicate collection will be kept at the MSB for long-term conservation, seed biology study and other research purposes which will help us better understand the plant’s evolution and potential utilisation.

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