Thirteen thousand years

  

The crops we grow today are the result of generations of breeding and selection. Our attempts to store seeds go back an equally long way. This page takes you on a journey through the first thirteen thousand years of humanity’s relationship with crops and their seeds.

From 11,000 BCE: Plant domestication begins. Seeds are selected for desirable traits, and landraces passed down generations of farmers. People move seeds round the world as a result of migration, cultural exchanges and changing food preferences.

From 1492 CE: Colonialism speeds up movements of genetic resources as crops are taken from their original settings and shipped across oceans.

From 1768: Collecting takes a more scientific turn when collectors from the UK’s Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew are sent to explore islands of the South Pacific and southern Africa. They return with thousands of plants.

Late 19th century: The start of modern crop breeding: Russia and the United States of America dispatch seed collectors around the globe to collect and study plant diversity. They create seed stores for the resulting collections, and develop improved varieties of existing crops.

1941: During World War II, besieged Russian scientists choose to starve rather than eat any of the 6,000 varieties of seeds they had carefully collected over the previous 50 years; their actions saved the seed bank.

From 1950s: The Green Revolution transforms agriculture and feeds growing populations around the globe. The US opens the first genebank, the National Seed Storage Laboratory, to support the achievements of the Green Revolution.

1961: The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) establishes a Panel of Experts on Exploration and Introduction, to develop an international plan for collecting and preserving crop diversity.

1971: CGIAR is founded as a global research partnership. Today, CGIAR Centers store more than 700,000 seed accessions all over the world.

1974: CGIAR’s International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (IBPGR) releases a set of standards for long-term conservation of genetic resources. They include detailed advice on the design of long-term storage facilities, and urge genebanks to monitor the viability of seeds in their collections.

From 1983: The FAO’s International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources calls for an internationally coordinated network of national, regional and international research centers and genebanks.

1994: The FAO and the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IBPGR) jointly publish a new set of professional standards, called the ‘Genebank Standards’, to strengthen national capabilities in the ex situ conservation of plant genetic resources.

2008: In Norway, a Global Seed Vault is created in Svalbard, as an Arctic back-up to be used by genebanks all over the world.

2014: The FAO publishes a revised set of Genebank Standards. They advise on best practice for the conservation of plant genetic resources in seed genebanks, field genebanks, in vitro culture and cryopreservation.

What will happen next? In this course, experts from CGIAR share their experience of best practice. As you work through the material presented here, you will learn about important new discoveries, which could inform the guidance given to genebanks in the future. It is satisfying to know that many of these discoveries were the result of the careful study of genetic resources, collected and conserved in genebanks of the past.