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Preserving rare species of plants
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It may surprise you to learn that one third of the world's wild plants are in danger of extinction. To save them for future generations to enjoy, a special project is underway.
It may be the World's most ambitious project.
At Kew in West London, the Royal Botanical Gardens is renowned for its collection of 10 percent of the world's rarest wild plants.
As part of the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership, the project seeks to provide an insurance policy against wild plant extinction.
Now, Kew is working with 54 countries to ensure endangered and rare plant species are preserved.
Paul Smith, Head of Millennium Seed Bank Project, said, "It's impossible to over emphasize the power of the Seed Bank. This is the largest seed bank in the world, it contains more plant diversity than any other seed bank on the planet. It has within it nearly 30,000 species here, approaching two billion seeds, and they have all of the potential that we need going into the future."
Before going into the greenhouse, the selected seeds need to be dried in special rooms with temperatures of 15 degrees Celsius and humidity at 15 percent. Then, they undergo a quality check before they are put into storage at a temperature of minus 20 degrees.
Once they are frozen, tests are carried out to find the best ways of germinating the seeds.
One of the plants here, Leuca Spermum, has been grown from 200-year-old seeds that were stored in the Tower of London.
The next phase of the project involves collecting a further 15 percent of the world's wild species.
The focus is to look at ways of using the seeds for human welfare, particularly for medicines and food use.
By 2020, the project hopes to collect and do research on 75-thousand plants from around the globe.
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