[PCA] An important message about the future of SID (Seed Information Database) and how you can help

[Stephanie Frischie]

In December 2021, RBG - Kew announced that, due to an agency compliance
issue regarding accessibility, they will discontinue the Seed Information
Database (SID)
<https://seedscisoc.org/important-notice-regarding-the-seed-information-database/>
in March 2022.

SID <https://data.kew.org/sid/sidsearch.html> has been an invaluable and
reliable source of information on native seeds for countless stakeholders
for many years. It provides user-friendly access to essential information
on seed weight, storage behaviour, germination requirements, and other
traits for more than 50.000 plant taxa
<https://biss.pensoft.net/article/37030/>. This wealth of information has
supported everyday operations in scientific research, seed use in
ecological restoration, seed collection and propagation, and teaching (just
to name a few). Upon learning about the plans to discontinue SID, members
of the native seed community expressed their concern about this news.

“As producers of seeds of native Scottish plants for use in ecological
restoration, we are very frequent users of the database. SID is our first
port of call for information about seed testing protocols and storage when
dealing with new species in our production and has been extremely useful to
us and to many users of our seeds who we often refer to the database. It
has been so useful to us that the manager of our seed testing laboratory
has described its closure as ‘like losing a colleague’.

— Giles Laverack: Scotia Seeds and Secretary of the European Native Seed
Procurers Association

The mission of the International Network for Seed-based Restoration (INSR)
is to support the exchange of ideas, approaches, lessons learned, and data
relevant to planning, policy, and science as it relates to native seed
biology, ecology, and seed-based restoration. To this end, the board of
INSR, along with SER, has communicated with RBG Kew staff, expressing our
concern about the negative impact of closing SID. The growing community of
restoration practitioners rely on SID as the go-to resource that is
accessible, simple to use, and available across global platforms. Kew has
described their plans to implement a new Global Seed Information Facility
(GSIF) by 2025. While the concept of GSIF as a portal for data sounds
promising for the future, we are currently quite concerned about the loss
of access to data for users during the period between the closure of SID in
2022 and the completion of GSIF in two or three years.

“Without SID, the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration and major
international initiatives such as global forest landscape restoration will
not have reliable, well curated and scientifically accurate information to
guide seed-based solutions.
The world without SID will be in a poorer position to make accurate,
science-based decisions about seed-based restoration and conservation. This
is at a time when all our technical resources need to be at full capacity
to ensure the impending climate and biodiversity crises are averted.

— Kingsley Dixon: Chair of the Society of Ecological Restoration

We wish to better understand the potential impact of discontinuing SID on
native seed use. For this reason, we’d like to hear from you about your
experience with SID and how its closure could impact you and your
organization by completing the short survey below.

INSR, along with SER and other organisations, is exploring alternative ways
with RBG Kew to maintain easy access to the SID data beyond March 2022.
Your response to this anonymous survey <https://forms.gle/ZjDEzjZYBHTZ4RHE9>
will help us with these discussions and aid us in moving forward on this
matter, potentially looking for alternative hosting options.
https://ser-insr.org/news/2022/2/15/please-kew-dont-drop-the-sid-seed-information-database
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