Why do we bank wild seed collections? Where do we collect seeds from? What does a seed scientist at Kew actually do?
Watch seed scientists in action at The Millennium Seedbank, Wakehurst Place. Situated in the county of West Sussex, England, the vaults of the Millennium Seed Bank are arguably the most biodiverse place in the world! Take a look behind the scenes in this short video.
See MSB scientist Michael Way at work with Chilean partners in the Atacama desert.
Following unusually heavy and early rainfall in March 2015, Kew scientists rushed to assess the effect of this on local flora, and to collect samples of seeds to store in Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank to conserve them for future generations.
Find out more about current Kew Science projects here.
Watch this exclusive interview with Dr. Ruth Eastwood, the Crop Wild Relative Project Co-ordinator at the Millennium Seed Bank of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
The initiative, led by the Global Crop Diversity Trust (Crop Trust) in partnership with Kew's Millennium Seed Bank and in collaboration with national and international agricultural research institutes, is the largest ever global effort to conserve crop wild relatives. These wild plants contain essential traits that could be bred into crops to make them more hardy and versatile in the face of dramatically different climates expected in the coming years. The Norwegian government is providing funding for this ten-year initiative.
