“If all human life depends on plants, doesn’t it make sense that perhaps we should try to save them?”
Jonathan Drori
Scientists surely understand. Recent years have seen several large-scale efforts to preserve the genetic diversity of the plants on our planet as it suffers from climate change and habitat loss. For example, two years ago the Norwegians opened the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on Spitzbergen, a place so cold the seeds would remain preserved for weeks even in the absence of power. It has now become the worlds most diverse collection of crop seeds. The rationale and activities of the largest seed bank, the Millenium Seed Bank in England, is described in an informative TED talk: Jonathan Drori: Why we’re storing billions of seeds.
But the first plant genebank was created in Russia, near St. Petersburg, in 1926. The Pavlovsk Experiment Station contains the world’s first and largest field genebank for fruits and berries. The importance of these fields and the variety of plants grown there is such that during the Seige of Leningrad, the scientists tending the plants decided it was preferable to starve themselves to death rather than eat the plants in their care. Now Pavlovsk is under attack again, this time not by Nazis, but by property developers who plan to destroy the beds and build housing. Unfortunately, the plants and varieties grown there cannot be moved easily and do not grow true from seeds.
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