Conservation of native plants in the seed base Bank of Chile

Abstract

Despite the value of Chilean flora, 46% of the species, currently evaluated, are critically endangered or endangered, so ex situ conservation measures are key to their preservation. We analyzed the current state and conservation gaps of the native species preserved in the Seed Base Bank (SBB) of the Instituto de Investigaciones Agropecuarias (INIA), the main curator of Chile's plant genetic resources. Our analysis showed that 3,040 seed accessions of native species are preserved in the SBB, corresponding to 1,256 species, which represents 26.9% of the Chilean flora. The area with the largest number of accessions collected corresponds to the northern and central parts of the country, indicating that there has been a bias in terms of concentrating efforts on the continental regions and ignoring other important geographical regions of Chile, such as those located in the insular territory. A quarter of the threatened plants belonging to the Chilean flora are not currently conserved in the SBB, as they are vascular species without seeds, which cannot be protected in the long term under the traditional conditions of a seed bank. Additional collection and research efforts are required to increase the collection of native species in the SBB, especially threatened and endemic species.

Potential Use of Chilean Native Species in Vertical Greening Systems

“…Chile has been described by Subercaseaux [35] as "a geographic extravaganza" due to its remarkable geographical variations (e.g., the Atacama desert, a wide coastline of 6435 km in length, inland ice fields, active and non-active volcanoes, the Andes Mountains, etc.) and has been considered a biogeographic island by Pañitrur-De la Fuente et al [36], due to its aforementioned natural barriers. Simultaneously, the difference in altitude from western to eastern Chile, meaning sea level coast to the Andes Mountains reaching 6893 m above sea level, generates a wide range of bioclimatic variations in its altitude profile.…”

“…Simultaneously, the difference in altitude from western to eastern Chile, meaning sea level coast to the Andes Mountains reaching 6893 m above sea level, generates a wide range of bioclimatic variations in its altitude profile. These variations in combination with the natural boundaries and the climatic latitudinal gradient, create diverse geographic conditions, and different unique phenomena are expressed, such as the "Flowering Desert", the "Bolivian Winter" and "El Niño", which profoundly affect the Chilean flora [33,[36][37][38][39][40][41][42].…”

“…Chile possesses a unique world heritage, recognized among the 34 global biodiversity hotspots ("regions that contain exceptional concentrations of native species but are experiencing rapid loss of their natural habitat") [36,47] of vascular flora by the Global 200 initiative of the Word Wide Fund for Nature and the World Bank, and its flora includes the second highest percentage of endemicity in South America [36,47]. In accordance with the taxonomic, geographic information and the catalogue of the vascular plants growing in continental and insular Chile presented by Rodriguez et al [48], the Chilean flora includes 186 families, 1121 genera and 5471 species, 4655 of which are native, 2145 of these are endemic to Chile and 816 species are introduced [48].…”

Seed Characterization and Evaluation of Pre-Germinative Barriers in the Genus Alstroemeria (Alstroemeriaceae)

“…Despite the high urbanization in the central zone of Chile (Metropolitan and Valparaíso regions), this is where the largest number of taxa are concentrated, with 14 species [1,2]. This territory is considered to be a hotspot of biodiversity [7], and it is characterized by a Mediterranean climate marked by hot and dry summers and cold and rainy winters [8].…”