Seed Bank Faces Funding Crunch
The Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst Place in Sussex said many projects may have to be cut due to a £100m ($1.8m) shortfall.
In the year 2000, the seed bank was set up in hopes of collecting and maintaining seeds of every plant on earth.
Head of seed conservation department, Dr Paul Smith said that the project pays about £2,000 ($3500) per species, “which is a bargain,” he added.
Owned and managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, it was founded with the intention of protecting plants from extinction.
"We’re talking about £100m over 10 years, to deliver a quarter of the world’s plant species in safe secure storage. That’s good value.
"The key thing here is the seeds that we collect and conserve and carry out research on have importance for people’s livelihoods.
"We’re all worried about climate change.
"We need to make sure we have those species before they disappear, so that we have options for their use."
Right now, the seed bank has enough money to continue its work until the end of 2009. In order for the bank to continue in the long run, funding over the next decade will be necessary.
Several thousand seeds of each species are kept at the site.
Teams of scientists and technicians there are aiming to have banked 10% of the world’s wild flowering plants by 2010.
They are aiming to have collected 25% by 2020, depending on whether more funding can be secured.
Scientists have already "brought back from the dead" a plant that has not been seen in its native habitat for more than 70 years.
Botanists helped to germinate the last remaining seeds of Belgian grass in 2005. Bromus bromoideus, once common in hayfields around Liege and Rocheford, declined rapidly from the early 1900s.
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