Seeds of Success: Collateral Benefits to Agricultural Crop Improvement, Research, and Education

Abstract

A fter the destructive wildfire seasons of 1999 and 2000 across the western United States, Congress directed the establishment of a native seed and plant materials development program to increase the quality and quantity of native plants available for restoring public lands after wildfires. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) initiated Seeds of Success (SOS), a US native seed collecting effort (Haidet and Olwell, 2015), as the first step in developing native plant materials that are readily available through commerce or otherwise. The program has focused on common wild native species used for environmental restoration (frequently called "workhorse" species), with collections of seed made from many populations to ensure a broad range of ecotypic as well as genetic variation (BLM, 2018).

How to increase the supply of native seed to improve restoration success: the US native seed development process

“…Alternatively, fewer species and/or larger collections decrease curation and storage costs at the expense of potentially missing collateral opportunities (e.g. Hoban et al 2013 for conservation genetics; Greene et al 2019 for crop wild relatives; Barga et al 2020 for predisturbance collections). Seed collection teams should keep in mind challenges imposed by natural factors such as year‐to‐year weather variability and species phenology that affect seed development in wild populations.…”

The unique role of seed banking and cryobiotechnologies in plant conservation

“…In agriculture, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) recognized the importance of ensuring the availability of genetic resources to sustain agriculture and landscapes (FAO, 2019). Case studies of agricultural uses of plant biodiversity, and the role of seed banks in providing materials, grow daily as the need increases to protect crops from emerging diseases, altered landscapes, and changing weather patterns (Byrne et al, 2018; Greene et al., 2019; Khoury, Greene, Krishnan, Miller, & Moreau, 2019). For example, the USDA National Plant Germplasm System yearly receives hundreds of thousands of requests from around the world for information and germplasm and yearly distributes about 250,000 accessions for diverse uses.…”

“…United Nations (FAO) recognized the importance of ensuring the availability of genetic resources to sustain agriculture and landscapes(FAO, 2019). Case studies of agricultural uses of plant biodiversity, and the role of seed banks in providing materials, grow daily as the need increases to protect crops from emerging diseases, altered landscapes, and changing weather patterns(Byrne et al, 2018;Greene et al, 2019;Khoury, Greene, Krishnan, Miller, & Moreau, 2019).For example, the USDA National Plant Germplasm System yearly receives hundreds of thousands of requests from around the world for information and germplasm and yearly distributes about 250,000 accessions for diverse uses. Moreover, greater awareness of the rich diversity of plants in North America, and the role of these plants in sustaining resilient ecosystems unique to the United States, has led to national, multiorganizational partnerships, such as Seeds of Success (SOS), a national native seed collection program, led by the Bureau of Land Management.…”

Seeds of Success: A conservation and restoration investment in the future of U.S. lands

“…Depending on accession size, a small quantity of seed may be requested for research and increase through the U.S. NPGS GRIN, which is managed by the USDA Agricultural Research Service. To-date, over 12,000 seed packets containing seed from SOS collections have been distributed in response to over 2,600 orders originating from a range of state and federal agencies, nonprofits, academic institutions, and individuals, who are using the collections to study plant genetics and taxonomy, research crop wild relatives, investigate medicinal uses of plants, and for restoration research (Greene et al, 2019). Thus, these seed collections are an important resource for multiple types of scientific work.…”