stories.cwrdiversity.orgThe Journey of a Wild Relative | CWR Interactive Stories

logo Artboard 1 Page 1 Page 1 Fill 1 The Journey of a Wild Relative Menu From the edge of a cliff under the Georgian sun to the rain-soaked undergrowth of the Malaysian rain forest, the wild cousins of our domesticated crops are growing in hard-to-reach places all over the world. For centuries, we have ignored them, or worse, labelled them as unwanted weeds – until recently. Interest in these plants is not completely new, but more and more scientists look to these crop wild relatives, as they are known, in search of traits that are missing from the crops that feed us – traits that can make our agricultural crops more resilient. But to tap into their sturdy nature, we need access to them. And many of these plants – if not most – are missing from the world’s genebanks. The Journey of a Wild Relative: Entering the Millennium Seed Bank Text by Oriole Wagstaff | Photos: LM Salazar Under the Crop Wild Relatives Project, seed collectors and researchers from 24 countries are venturing into these wild spaces to gather over 250 crop wild relative species. Once collected, these seeds are divided: one set is conserved in national genebanks; another is loaded into cars, lorries, boats and planes, to eventually arrive at a rural village in southern England. This is the site of the world’s largest seed bank for wild species, the Millennium Seed Bank (MSB), run by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. CONSERVATION Under the Crop Trust led CWR Project, the MSB, Kew coordinates the collecting phase of a 10-year, global effort to collect, safeguard and make available the crop wild relatives (CWR) of our most relied upon crops. In this interactive story, we will take you inside the MSB – entering dry rooms, exploring the laboratories and finally settling in the long-term cold store. This journey highlights the importance of each stage.It’s always exciting to receive seeds from the Crop Wild Relative project partners. We’re seeing a lot of material we’ve never seen before including many plants which have never before been banked, ” explains Janet Terry, Seed Collections Manager. The brown paper bags in the photograph came from Sudan and hold hundreds of seeds of wild relatives of sorghum and pearl millet. The Agricultural Research Corporation in Sudan joined the CWR Project in 2015.This is their first shipment, ” says Chris Cockel, Interim Crop Wild Relatives Project Co-ordinator, MSB.More seeds will soon come. The Sudanese team is busy searching for and collecting relatives of 10 staple crops, including chickpea, cowpea, and finger millet. ” When a batch arrives it is unpacked. All contents are checked – paperwork, herbarium specimens, and seed packets.All packages must have these three items, ” says Janet.Seed packages alone are useless. For example: we need to know the where, when, what and who is associated with the collection. Electronic data will have been sent before hand. The more we know about the seeds, the more useful it will be for scientists working with them. ’’ All material collected under the Crop Wild Relatives project is shared under the terms of the Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA) within the framework of the multi-lateral system of the International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) . At the MSB, as in most genebanks, everything will then end up with a serial number, which allows the seeds to be tracked through the system. The Drying Room After unpacking, seeds are taken to the dry room where it is 15°C and 15% relative humidity. This is similar to the humidity in an airplane.Drying seeds is vital. It slows down biological processes inside the seed which reduces deterioration, ” says Janet.Drying must begin in the field, as soon as they are collected. ” When harvested, up to 50% of fresh seed weight is water which would kill the cells when frozen. For that reason, seeds remain in the dry room for at least a month, to ensure they are dried to between 3-7% moisture content. Properly drying seeds extends their lifespan by up to 40 times and ensures the seeds can be frozen without damage. Once dried, the seeds are cleaned to remove unwanted material where needed. It’s important to reduce unnecessary bulk, as the bank has limited capacity. This also minimizes the risks of plant disease, makes drying easier and ensures good quality collections. Some seeds are robust, others fragile, so cleaning them requires different tools and great skill. The sorghum seeds pictured here are sieved to remove dust and debris.These are amazing collections, cleaned very well in country, so there’s very little to remove, ’’ Janet noted. The high quality of this collection is a real indicator, not only of the commitment and care shown by collectors, but of successful training and capacity building. ‘‘ The average time to clean a seed collection is 2 ½ hours, but some collections might take 19 hours, some might take 10 minutes,’ ’ Janet explains. Seeds go through an aspirator (shown here), which uses air flow to separate seeds by weight and to remove extra debris and any seeds that might be empty or contain insects. During the cleaning process the quality of the seed remains unknown. The seeds are cut with the aid of microscopes to see if the quality of the cut seed is up to standards. The team is looking for a white starchy consistency; anything that will inform other processes down the line, or give hints as to how you might germinate this seeds.Even after 32 years here, I can still open a packet and see something I’ve never seen before, and wonder what does that look like inside? ’’ says Janet. After cleaning, a sample of 20-50 seeds from each collection is X-rayed, depending on the collection size. This provides an initial indication of quality. Lucy Taylor (left) has worked at Kew for 3½ years, while Frances Stanley (right) has processed collections for more than 20 years. In one day, hundreds of seeds might be X-rayed at the MSB. But an X-ray cannot show which seeds are alive or dead. It can, however, show which seeds are full and which are empty. This is important as the MSB works to conserve good seeds.We are after those seeds with the potential to grow and contribute to crop improvements, ’’ says Lucy. Let’s look at the sorghum collection from Sudan. In the X-ray pictured here, 46 of the 50 seeds are good quality and four are infested.This is a good result and the kind of numbers we hope for, ” says Lucy.This does not show whether the seed will germinate, enabling it to grow and develop, but it does provide an idea about the quality of the collections. ” Digital X-ray machines make it easy for the MSB staff to send images of partners’ collections, to explain how good the collection is.This feedback is important for the partners, so they can change – if need be – their processes or activities in the field, ” says Chris. Once the seeds are X-rayed and counted, and before they go into the bank, the final step is to make sure they are dry enough for storage. This is done using a rotronic, pictured here, that measures equilibrium relative humidity. Seeds should be at around 17% equilibrium relative humidity (which equates to 3-7% moisture content). If they are not dry enough, they return to the dry rooms. Once they are suitably dry they are then put into air tight containers. Now, they are ready for the vault. The CWR seeds are safeguarded here, in the cold vault of the MSB, as part of the institution’s overall collection. Currently it stores more than two billion seeds. This represents over 37,600 species, from 189 countries. The vault was designed by Stanton Willliams Architects and built in 2000. It can house samples from at least 30% of the world’s flora in a space the size of 30 double decker buses. In seed banks, for every decrease in 5°C the life span of a seed doubles until roughly -20°C. The MSB seed vault is kept at a constant -20°C, but for the MSB staff members that spend time within its walls, it feels more like -26°C...