Seed banking for biodiversity conservation

Conservation seed banking is the collection and long term storage of seeds and underpins many plant recovery activities. These activities include plant translocations, conservation seed orchards, restoration of degraded plant communities and research such as genetic studies, and screening for susceptibility to threatening processes such as disease (eg. Dieback - Phytophthora cinnamomi)

The Threatened Flora Seed Centre is responsible for the collection and storage of seeds of conservation listed plants in Western Australia as well as species associated with Threatened Ecological Communities and
biodiversity hotspots.

Conservation seed banking is the collection and long term storage
of seeds

The Threatened Flora Seed Centre has collected seed from over 70 per
cent of Western Australia's threatened plant species, many of which have
been used in recovery actions.

Why do we save seeds?

Many of Western Australia's native plants are at risk of extinction. In the wild our plants are threatened by a range of environmental problems including habitat destruction, salinity, drought, disease, weed invasion and climate change.

Our primary focus is to protect plants where they occur in the wild (in situ or on site). Seed banking is a complementary conservation activity that acts as a genetic insurance policy to safeguard against extinction in the wild. These collections are available for a range of end uses.

The advantages of storing seed are:

• They occupy very little space and are more compact than living plants for ex situ (off-site) storage.
• They can be stored for considerable periods of time.
• They are portable.
• They can be grown into whole plants to be used in restoration activities at any time of the year.
• They allow for a greater collection of genetic diversity than individual plants in living collections.
• Unlike removing whole plants or plant parts, seeds can be collected with little impact on the plant or population from which they come.
• They can be stored at several different locations. Duplication at different locations is a safeguard against accidental loss at one location.

Seed banking offers us an efficient and cost effective way of conserving genetic diversity for future conservation work.