The Millenium Seed Bank

Day 33 / 365

Plants are essential to our survival. No matter if you live in a village or in a big city, your day to day lives depends upon plants, directly or indirectly.

Yet the sad truth is that many plant species today are facing extinction, and this has to do with the fact that they have to share their habitats with us. While the majority of humanity is busy destroying our planet’s flora, people in the Millenium Seed Bank project are working hard to protect it.

Saving billions of plant seeds

The purpose of the Millenium Seed Bank project is to provide insurance against extinction of plant species by storing their seeds for future use.

The project has partnerships all around the world. They train local people to properly identify endangered plant species and collect their seeds. The seeds have to be carefully dried and stored in a cold environment so that they can be made to germinate again 1000s of years in the future.

Contribution to research

Part of the project also involves research on the best ways to grow such endangered species. Germination tests are done every 10 years on seeds of each and every species stored. The findings of these tests are sent to the regions where the seeds came from, and it enables the local people to grow these plants more efficiently.

Progress so far

The first goal of the project, to cover 10% of all wild plant species, was reached in 2009. The project has successfully stored 2 billion seeds so far, and they aim to cover 25% of all species by 2020

This story is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — The Optimism Bias