The Future of Noah’s Ark: Using Seedbanks to Preserve a Genetic Savings Account

by Ben Sebastian, Land Steward

Long ago, all of us were stewards of this land, not just occupants. As a society, we had a greater harmony with nature so that by protecting ourselves, we secured nature with us. We cherished the plants that healed us, the animals that fed us, and we knew how to balance what we took with what we gave. As industrialization cut corners to streamline our necessities and desires, our coherence with nature became fragmented. Our reliance on a stable environment seemingly became arguable as humans tried to prove we no longer needed it. We can force the earth to do what we want through intensive farming practices, and we can use our man-made water filters to clear the pollution that it causes. We innovate new ways to shelter ourselves from thedamage we continue to cause, and we play the victim of our own choices when technology struggles to keep up. Meanwhile, ecosystems collapse to the point that no human intervention will have the capacity to fix it. When environmental destruction and degradation outweighs restoration and resilience, what is the backup plan to ensuring ecological longevity?

The answer is seedbanks.

Land Steward Ben Sebastian spreading native seeds collected by Native Plant Nursery volunteers.

An article recently published in New Phytologist described a Bayesian Additive Regression Tree (BART) model that predicted that 45.1% of all flowering plants are threatened with extinction (Bachman et. al 2024). A critical ecological devolution is the destabilization of viable wild seedbanks. Climate change effects are causing extreme and sporadic weather patterns that dismantle normal seed production, reducing quantity and quality of native seeds needed to sustain populations. Each passing year further reduces the gene pool, creating a downward spiral as certain species become increasingly vulnerable to extirpation. Seedbank restoration practices are mandatory for ecosystem resilience, and seedbank storage facilities can act as genetic repositories in times of turmoil (Wambugu, P. W., Nyamongo, D. O., & Kirwa, E. C. 2023).

The main goal of seedbank restoration is to reinstate the native diversity of seeds within the wild landscape, also known as the in-situ, or “on-site”, seedbank. At Sycamore Land Trust, we have a Native Plant Nursery where we sow seeds harvested from local preserve populations.

These are grown in individual containers for future planting back into the environment to help restore native populations of the same genetic dynamic. This nursery would be described as an inter-situ, or “intermediate site”, genebank (CPC 2019). These individuals are exposed to environmental conditions that mirror their intended habitat, but have additional maintenance to ensure survival before planting in the wild. A successful practice would be for these “plug plantings” to mature to thriving adult specimens that perform ecosystem functions and refresh the native seedbank for subsequent generations. The presence of these species solidifies the fundamentals of the ecosystem such as soil chemistry, microclimates, water availability, etc. which allows for other more sensitive species to germinate as “volunteer plants”.

Sycamore’s Native Plant Nursery at Cedar Crest, our headquarters in Bloomington. Photos by Chris Fox

For example, we often transplant hydrophytic species grown in our Native Plant Nursery to act as pioneer species for our newly constructed wetlands. These species facilitate the building blocks of wetland characteristics, preparing the area to welcome a successive network of natural introductions. Ultimately, a prospering ecosystem evolves, fit with pollinators, breeding herpetology, migrating shorebirds, wildlife that find their place within the framework.

A subset of our inter-situ genebank is the establishment of seed plots within the nursery to allow sustainable seed harvesting (turning our genebank into a seedbank). A genebank becomes a seedbank if the practice prioritizes the storage of seed specifically, rather than other preservation types such as a tissue sample or clonal specimen. When a sample is relocated from the environment to be stored for long-term purposes, this becomes an ex-situ, or “off-site” genebank. Common examples of ex-situ genebanks are natural history museums, herbariums, and botanical gardens. There is not necessarily a priority for these species, or their genes, to be transplanted back into the environment, but larger facilities often have protocols for preserving genetics. One scenario is that voucher specimens are often preserved as historical records that contain enough morphological or genetic information to undeniably confirm that species was present at that location during that time period. Seedbanks extend on this practice by exploiting the natural process of seed dormancy as a genetic preservation tactic.

Native seeds harvested for habitat restoration in the Native Plant Nursery. John Lawrence

Seedbanks help alleviate the ethical issues of overharvesting wild seed and allow protection for specific population genetics. Consideration must ensure the bank contains a complex and formidable representation of wild population genetics for each species, prioritizing local genotypes where possible. Inbreeding or outbreeding depression could occur if one did not collect a substantial enough genetic pool, and over a few generations the population can be become inviable. Seedbanks also give us an oversaturated supply of seedbank restoration resources with the ability to cross families and introduce diversifying genetics. Particular concern should be imposed in these instances to ensure there is no creation of hybrids that could cause invasive problems. There is a movement for the growth of seedbank networks to ensure widespread security of genetic localities while maintaining crossing capabilities.

Plant plugs grown in the Native Plant Nursery being planted to restore habitat at Fix-Stoelting Preserve in Monroe County. Chris Fox

Single environmental disasters can wipe out entire landscapes and their ecosystems. Seeds from an ex-situ seedbank could be deemed desirable to transplant back into the environment for restoration or research purposes. With strategic species choices, one could preserve specific plant communities that could be reintroduced into habitats that need certain ecosystem functions restored or augmented. These ex-situ storage methods should not be used to justify a lack of conservation initiatives for wild adult populations or their natural seedbanks. The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation maintains parameters to prioritize in-situ conservation while using ex-situ storage methods as a backup (Sharrock, S. 2020). Ex-situ seedbanks could be anything from a small filing cabinet with dried seeds in airtight containers, to a multi-million dollar storage facility equipped with liquid nitrogen cryopreservation techniques (Abeli et al. 2019). The current largest seedbank is the Millennium Seed Bank of Kew Gardens in Richmond, England, which consists of over 2.4 billion seeds representing almost 40,000 different species (Millennium Seed Bank Kew).

The tornado sirens are blaring. Destruction for your home is imminent. What do you do? If you have time and a window of safety, you remove relics that make that home yours. A family photo. The blanket your mother knitted. Your son’s favorite stuffed animal. Seeds. You escape and find safety. Demolition wreaks havoc, leaving you to rebuild, refurbish, and restore. You return with your relics to make that home yours once again. You put the photo back on the wall. It looks stark and awkward by itself. At first, the place might be unrecognizable. Everything is too manicured and manufactured. You can still smell the plastic that the new furniture was wrapped in. The stiff mattress is foreign to your body. The stairs lack their familiar creaks. The pencil marks on the doorframe tracking your children’s growth spurts are gone, and in its place is a freshly painted bare slate free of fingerprints and smudges. The bones are there, but that feeling of home is missing.

With time, the rigidness starts to soften. The crisp edges begin to blend. This home will never be exactly what it was before, but you continue to add back what was once native. One day, you walk in the door, and it smells like home again. The wall that once held the single family photo is now a collage of relationships. Your granddaughter just reached 40 inches tall, and there is a pencil mark on the doorframe for the special occasion. The second step is starting to creak. The ecosystem that was once your home is healing. How awful it is that the disaster happened in the first place. We should do all we can to make sure it never happens again, but it is naïve to assume we have that control. Nature is inconsiderate of our plans when causing catastrophe, and we are running out of time to build Noah’s Ark. Seeds can be our relics that ensure restorative resilience in a merciless world. Seedbanks safeguard these relics, and therefore protect what makes these ecologies our home.

References

Abeli, T, Dalrymple, SE, Godefroid, S, Mondoni, A, Muller, JV, Rossi, G and Orsenigo, S (2019) Ex situ collections and their potential for the restoration of extinct plants. Conservation Biology. ISSN 0888-8892 (Abeli et al. 2019)

Bachman, S.P., Brown, M.J.M., Leão, T.C.C., Lughadha, E.N., and Walker B.E. (2024). Extinction risk predictions for the world’s flowering plants to support their conservation. New Phytologist, 242(2), 797-808. doi: 10.1111/nph.19592. (Bachman et. al 2024)

Center for Plant Conservation. 2019. CPC Best Plant Conservation Practices to Support Species Survival in the Wild. Center for Plant Conservation, Escondido, CA. (CPC 2019)

Millennium Seed Bank Kew. Available at: https://www.kew.org/wakehurst/whats-at wakehurst/millennium-seed-bank  (Millennium Seed Bank Kew)

Sharrock, S. (2020). Plant Conservation Report 2020: A review of progress in implementation of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation 2011-2020. Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Montréal, Canada and Botanic Gardens Conservation International, Richmond, UK.

Wambugu, P. W., Nyamongo, D. O., & Kirwa, E. C. (2023). Role of Seed Banks in Supporting Ecosystem and Biodiversity Conservation and Restoration. Diversity, 15(8), Article 8. https://doi.org/10.3390/d15080896

This article is from the Summer 2025 issue of The Twig, “The Volunteer Issue.” Read the issue at sycamorelandtrust.org/twig.