Seed bank

A facility that collects and stores seeds under controlled conditions for future planting, research, or conservation. Its collections preserve plant genetic diversity and can support restoration or renewed cultivation.

Seed viability: A seed’s capacity to remain alive and germinate under suitable conditions. Banks monitor viability to decide when stored accessions need regeneration.
Svalbard Global Seed Vault: A secure facility in Norway that stores backup copies of seed collections from around the world. It provides long-term backup storage for deposits held by other seed banks.
Nikolai Vavilov: A Russian and Soviet botanist who collected crop diversity and proposed centers of origin for cultivated plants. His collecting expeditions helped establish the value of preserving crop genetic resources.
Seed: A plant structure containing an embryo and stored resources, capable of developing into a new plant. Seed banks preserve this reproductive structure in a form that can remain viable.
Recalcitrant seed: A seed that cannot survive substantial drying or freezing and therefore resists conventional long-term storage. These seeds require alternatives to standard seed-bank conditions.
Seed desiccation: The removal of water from seeds to reduce deterioration during storage. Drying slows aging in many seeds before they enter cold storage.
Millennium Seed Bank: A Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew project that banks seeds from wild plants for conservation and research. Its collection focuses on conserving wild plant diversity, especially from drylands.
Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry: A Russian research institute that maintains one of the world’s oldest and largest collections of plant genetic resources. Vavilov’s institute became an early institutional model for safeguarding crop collections.
Germplasm: Heritable biological material used in research, breeding, or conservation. A banked seed sample is a form of plant germplasm.
Plant tissue culture: The growth of plant cells, tissues, or organs on a nutrient medium under controlled conditions. It can conserve plants whose seeds cannot be stored conventionally.

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