Assessing a potential seed collection

Cut test, Bureau of Land Management Pilot training course, Tucson, Arizona, Aug 2002.

Once the target plant has been located and identified in the field, collectors assess whether enough plants are available at that location with seed developed to a stage where it would disperse naturally. They also use a simple cut test to estimate the amount of damaged, infested or empty seeds.

An ideal seed collection for long-term conservation will be collected from at least 50 individual plants, and will contain enough seeds to enable samples to be provided for research. As many as 20,000 seeds may be necessary.

As we do not wish to harm the plant's future survival in the wild, we do not harvest more than 20% of the available seed, but by collecting from many individual plants it is often possible to safely collect many thousands of seeds.

More information on assessing a potential seed collection

Next: Sampling