[PCA] Doomsday vaul/comments from Richo Cech

[Lynda LeMole]

Lynda LeMole/United Plant savers forwards comments from Richo Cech: 

Although this kind of thing sounds like conservation, its pretty far out on the margin.  Real conservation of these species is where they are flourishing in natural places and in gardens.  Simply preserving the germplasm shouldn't make us feel secure, and it shouldn't make us feel like we don't need to have the plants growing around us.  Rather, it's a sign of the deterioration of planetary health that people are even thinking in this direction. 

Its the false sense of security part that I'm examining here.  People can think "Oh well, even though we don't grow any heirloom, open-pollinated corn anymore, it doesn't really matter, because the seeds are in the deep freeze."  Meanwhile (with the exception of gardeners and traditional farmers who are growing and eating the heirloom corn) people aren't getting much nutrition from corn anymore...

Lets keep our germplasm reserve in plants that are growing.  If we don't have the plant/human relationship, and we don't have the relationship between the plant and the biosphere, then the deep freeze is no cause for celebration.

Good Growing,
Richo
 

Good Growing,
Richo
 
HORIZON HERBS
PO box 69
Williams, OR  97544  USA
Phone (541) 846-6704
Fax (541) 846-6233
http://www.horizonherbs.com/pilot.asp?
 


-----Original Message-----
From: native-plants-bounces at lists.plantconservation.org [mailto:native-plants-bounces at lists.plantconservation.org] On Behalf Of Patricia_DeAngelis at fws.gov
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 6:49 AM
To: native-plants at lists.plantconservation.org
Subject: [PCA] Doomsday vault to hold 2 million seeds - newspaper article


See the article at the bottom of this message to learn more about the doomsday efforts to save the world's food plants.

Good news:  The US is already involved in efforts to conserve plant germplasm of all kinds.  Even better, these programs are inter-related through the Plant Conservation Alliance.  It will be interesting to see how these programs work together with the new Doomsday vault.  Read on!

* * * Seeds of Success (Plant Conservation Alliance Program)* * *

"Seeds of Success is an interagency program coordinated though the Plant Conservation Alliance (PCA) that supports and coordinates seed collection of native plant populations in the United States to increase the number of species and the amount of native seed that is available for use in stabilizing, rehabilitating and restoring lands in the United States. " <http://www.nps.gov/plants/sos/index.htm>


* * *USDA-Agricultural Reserach Service-Germplasm Repositories* * * We have ARS units that collect/maintain germplam on crops as well as other foci, for instance, grasses, medicinal plants.  They house the collections for the Seeds of Success program as part of their Native Plant Germplasm System (http://www.ars-grin.gov/npgs/).

"In 1990, the U.S. Congress authorized establishment of a National Genetic Resources Program (NGRP). It is the NGRP's responsibility to: acquire, characterize, preserve, document, and distribute to scientists, germplasm
of all lifeforms important for food and agricultural production.   The
Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN) web server provides germplasm information about plants, animals, microbes and invertebrates. This program is within the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service."  <http://www.ars-grin.gov/>

* * *Millenium Seed Bank Project* * *
Seeds of Success and the ARS Germplasm system are involved in the Millenium Seed Bank Project.

"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."(http://www.kew.org/msbp/)

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
See the the November PCA Meeting Summary and the upcoming January PCA Meeting Summary, which explain the broader context for these programs in the United States. (http://www.nps.gov/plants/summary.htm)

Patricia S. De Angelis, Ph.D.
Botanist - Division of Scientific Authority
Chair - Plant Conservation Alliance - Medicinal Plant Working Group US Fish & Wildlife Service 4401 N. Fairfax Dr., Suite 750 Arlington, VA  22203 703-358-1708 x1753
FAX: 703-358-2276
Working for the conservation and sustainable use of our green natural resources. <www.nps.gov/plants/medicinal>


-----Original Message-----
From: Susan_Jewell at fws.gov
Sent: 1/12/2006 2:26 PM
To: mpwg at lists.plantconservation.org
Subject: [MPWG] Doomsday vault to hold 2 million seeds - newspaper article FYI


Doomsday vault to avert world famine
12 January 2006
>From New Scientist Print Edition
Fred Pearce

Global Crop Diversity Trust
International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources
Consultative Group On International Agricultural Research

WITHIN a large concrete room, hewn out of a mountain on a freezing-cold island just 1000 kilometres from the North Pole, could lie the future of humanity. The room is a "doomsday vault" designed to hold around 2 million seeds, representing all known varieties of the world's crops. It is being built to safeguard the world's food supply against nuclear war, climate change, terrorism, rising sea levels, earthquakes and the ensuing collapse of electricity supplies. "If the worst came to the worst, this would allow the world to reconstruct agriculture on this planet," says Cary Fowler, director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, an independent international organisation promoting the project. New Scientist has learned that the Norwegian government is planning to create the seed bank next year at the behest of crop scientists. The $3 million vault will be built deep inside a sandstone mountain lined with permafrost on the Norwegian Arctic island of Spitsbergen. The vault will have metre-thick walls of reinforced concrete and will be protected behind two airlocks and high-security blast-proof doors. It will not be permanently manned, but "the mountains are patrolled by polar bears", says Fowler.


Is this the only way to safeguard the future of humanity?

Discuss this story >>

If the worst came to the worst, the seed vault would allow the world to reconstruct agriculture on this planet” The vault's seed collection, made up of duplicates of those already held at other seed banks, will represent the products of some 10,000 years of plant breeding by the world's farmers. Though most are no longer widely planted, the varieties contain vital genetic traits still regularly used in plant breeding. To survive, the seeds need freezing temperatures. Operators plan to replace the air inside the vault each winter, when temperatures in Spitsbergen are around -18 °C. But even if some catastrophe meant that the

vault was abandoned, the permafrost would keep the seeds viable. And even accelerated global warming would take many decades to penetrate the mountain vault. "This will be the world's most secure gene bank by some orders of magnitude," says Fowler. "But its seeds will only be used when all other samples have gone for some reason. It is a fail-safe depository, rather than a conventional seed bank." Norway first proposed the project in the 1980s but it was shelved because of security concerns: under an international treaty the Soviet Union had access to Spitsbergen at the time. With the end of the cold war and the signing of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, which gives legal protection to national crops, the door was open for the idea's revival. The project also comes at a time when there is growing concern about the safety of existing seed banks around the world. Many have been criticised for their poor security, ageing refrigeration systems and vulnerable electricity supplies. In the late 1980s, terrorists ransacked an international potato seed bank in the Peruvian Andes, while more recently anti-globalisation campaigners have demonstrated against other banks. The new Fort Knox for the world's crops will start by taking seeds from the network of seed banks run in the Philippines, Mexico, Syria, Nigeria and elsewhere by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, which is part-funded by the World Bank. "We will then add samples from elsewhere until we have a complete set of the world's crop varieties," says Fowler. The scheme won UN approval at a meeting of the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome last October. A feasibility study said the facility "would essentially be built to last forever". From issue 2534 of New Scientist magazine, 12 January 2006, page 12 _______________________________________________
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