Research facilities: Jodrell
Laboratory | Kew
Herbarium | Millennium Seed
Bank
The
Millennium Seed Bank Project is an international collaborative
plant conservation initiative. This worldwide effort
aims to safeguard 24,000 plant species from around the
globe against extinction.
It has already successfully
secured the future of virtually all the UK's native
flowering plants. The Millennium Seed Bank project also
aims to
carry out research to improve all aspects of seed conservation
such as seed storage, dormancy and germination.
Furthermore
it intends to encourage plant conservation throughout
the world by facilitating access to and transfer
of seed conservation technology; and to promote a public
interest
in plant conservation. |
 |
The Millennium Seed Bank Project
is managed by Kew’s Seed
Conservation Department and is based in the Wellcome Trust Millennium
Building, which provides a world-class facility as a focal resource
for this activity. At the beginning of 2005 the Millennium Seed
Bank housed over 22,000 collections of living seed representing
277 families and 10,887 species. In addition the Seed Conservation
Department now curates Kew’s ‘Herbarium Seed Collection’,
a reference collection of seeds from over 12,000 species, covering
291 families, and strongly complementary in taxonomic coverage
to the MSBP’s conservation collection.
Research in the Seed Conservation Department
specialises in fundamental aspects of seed storage and germination
of primarily
non-domesticated species. A full-time seed morphologist, Dr Wolfgang
Stuppy is employed specifically to carry out morphological and
anatomical studies that underpin the above research, as well
as integrating with Kew’s systematic and evolutionary interests.
Apart from SEM, which is based in the Jodrell laboratory at Kew,
the seed morphology function in the Seed Conservation Department
is well equipped, including a cryo-microtome, wax-embedding and
serial sectioning capability, and high end digital photomicrography
and photomicrography. In addition a start has been made on web-based
delivery of seed morphological information, and associated images
of species from the MSBP’s collection, via the Seed Information
Database (SID).
http://www.kew.org/msbp/index.html
http://www.kew.org/msbp/inform/team.html (for seed morphologist)
http://www.kew.org/sid/sidsearch.html (Seed Information Database)
