This post was originally published on here
CROP scientists at the UK Vegetable Genebank at Wellesborne have taken delivery of a golden parcel of heritage seeds.
A unique ‘seed relay’ that has travelled 170 miles across England to highlight the vital importance of saving, sharing and sowing seeds has arrived at the genebank at the Warwick University’s Innovation Campus.
The Heritage Seed Library (HSL), based at Ryton charity Garden Organic, is celebrating 50 years of seed conservation. Five decades after their founder sent the first precious parcel of at-risk heritage seeds to the UKVGB for preservation in the seed vault, the two organisations once again marked this special relationship with a delivery of heritage vegetable seeds.
The HSL is the only living library of heritage vegetables in the UK, and over the last 50 years, the UKVGB has been assisting the library by taking ‘insurance’ duplicates of seeds and preserving them in temperature-controlled -20C degree vaults.
Dr Charlotte Allender, head of UKVGB, said: “UKVGB and the Heritage Seed Library have a shared history in the conservation and use of vegetable crop genetic diversity. We use complementary approaches to ensure historic diversity in crops is not lost and assist the HSL by keeping samples of their collections backed up in our cold store.
“Diversity is the raw material used by plant breeders and ultimately by those growing crops on farms or in gardens – and making sure future generations have access to the variation contained within old varieties is essential to ensure sustainable crop production.”
The radish and carrot heritage varieties from the golden seed parcel will be grown to compare to the UKVGB’s globally significant collection of over 14,000 seed samples, which includes onions, beetroot, cabbages, cauliflowers and lettuce. The seed vault also contains crop wild relatives and ‘landraces’ –a variety that has become adapted to local conditions – which often hold a breadth of untapped genetic diversity.
