Seedbank

Under the seed library collection of seeds, including their description regarding location, year, thousand grain mass and the botanical classification, genetic ancestry, phenotypic and performance description of the relevant plant variety is understood.

History

The beginnings of seed collections date back to the settling down of humanity. She was referring to, first, keep the crop of the richest cereal plants of different locations separately, to label them accordingly and appropriate to the location to be used for seed for the next sowing season. The first scientifically documented public seed library was established in the 16th century by Leonhart Fuchs in connection with the Botanical Garden of the University of Tübingen.

Technical Requirements

Dry seeds with max. 14% moisture content loses annually 1-5% germination in unconditioned storage space. In cold rooms and hermetic closure of the seed containers this risk of loss is reduced to a few parts per thousand. The occasional germination tests ensure that the decreasing germination of the intercalated species is detected in time and the seed patterns are replaced by sowing and a new crop.

Support the seeds libraries

Today, seed libraries exist as:

• University and faculty libraries in many schools. These are used primarily as the basis for basic research and the training of botanists, farmers and gardeners.
• State seed libraries. Save the genetic diversity of cultivated plants of any country or region, such as the German Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research in Gatersleben.
• Breeding libraries of seed producers. They are the assets of these companies and the basis of further research and corporate success in the context of the breeding programs and performance test results.
• Plant Variety Protection library of plant variety offices. This preserves seeds as a reference pattern of the protected plant variety varieties. Based on the marketed annually in the market seed multiplication whose compliance is monitored with the stored pattern and compliance with the legal requirements for seed distribution.
• Gene libraries of crops. The largest library is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Longyearbyen on the island of Spitsbergen, a transnational seed collection of agricultural and wild plants. This seed library is an attempt to secure up to 4.5 million seed samples than the plant genetic resources of the earth for future generations in the station at minus 18 to minus 20 degrees Celsius.

The Saatgutverteilstationen of non-governmental organizations (NGOs / NGO ), which are sometimes referred to as a species library, such as the station Navdanya in India, have no seeds libraries in the classical sense. These stations will help to preserve the regional diversity of crops and are used to direct seed supply by smallholders.

Description of seed

The description of each seed sample usually contains information on:

• The seed: grain number, thousand seed mass, shape variance, water content, ingredient, harvest or nursery year, germination and vigor, and year their identification and used method.
• The plant species: botanical classification; for genus, species, variety and their phenotypic and genetic description as far as possible.
• The genealogy of crops: Original origins and pedigree, storage location of ancestral places.
• The Plant Variety Protection: Notes on the ownership and rights of pre-basic seed, inbred lines, crossing parents and registered varieties and their term of protection.