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A major seed bank in Aleppo, Syria, holds genes that might help researchers breed crops to survive climate change. But the conflict tearing the country apart has rendered the bank largely inaccessible for the past four years. Now an effort to duplicate its seed collection at more-accessible locations is ramping up.
On 29 September, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), which runs the bank in Aleppo, officially launched a sister bank in Terbol, Lebanon, which now hosts 30,000 duplicates. Together with a new bank in Rabat, Morocco, it will make thousands of seeds available to researchers.
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Seed banks function as bank accounts for plant genes. Collectors deposit seeds, which can later be 'withdrawn' to replenish crops lost in conflict or disaster, to breed new traits into crops — such as pest or heat resistance — and to research the evolution of plants over the ages.
(Score: 2) by Username on Thursday October 06 2016, @09:41PM
Keep them in the freezer with the fruit. Though, most trees you buy from a nursery are cloned. Take a green spike off your tree, splice it with a root and stick it in mud. I have a 1/4 success rate with that.
The one that pisses me off the most is grass seed. No point in even saving that stuff.