Millennium seed bank project under threat
11 November 2008
The world-famous Millennium Seed Bank at Kew is facing a funding crisis which may lead to it pulling back from its target of collecting seed from a quarter of the world's flowering plants by 2020.
Funding for the current phase of the worldwide seed collecting project runs out at the end of the decade, and although scientists at the seedbank are on target for their first aim, to collect 10% of the world's seed by 2010, the next step looks in doubt. It would cost £100 million to keep the seed bank expanding its collection at the current rate over the coming decade, yet it has secured less than a fifth of that sum.
The head of the seed bank, Dr Paul Smith, said the organisation is not in danger of closing. However, he said, without the further funding, the seed bank will be restricted simply to maintaining what it already has.
“That would be a pity, because we have the momentum at the moment – the skills and networks, as well as the people out in the field ready to get on with it,” he added.
The Millennium Seed Bank, based at Wakehurst Place in Sussex, was opened in 2000 with 10 years' worth of funding from sponsors including the government's Millennium Commission. It was built with enough storage space for half the world's flowering plants, and has become a key resource in saving some of the world's rarest species from extinction. Six of the seed species held at the Seed Bank have disappeared completely from the wild, with some plants brought back from the brink using sophisticated cloning techniques with DNA taken from seed cells. Kew is now working on techniques for reintroducing some previously extinct plants to the wild after restoring their native habitats.