The business of seed banks
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 17 September 2021
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Increasingly scientists are using genetic material from wild plants to make agricultural crops more resilient to climate change. To find out how, Rebecca Kesby heads to the Millennium Seed Bank for the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, in the south of England. There she meets Dr Chris Cockel, one of their project coordinators. We also hear from Asmund Asdal of the Global Seed Vault, which is located in a mountain on the archipelago of Svalbaard, between mainland Norway and the North Pole. We speak to Dr Shivali Sharma, who is developing climate resistant varieties of pigeon pea, a staple crop in many parts of rural India. And Mohamed Lassad Ben Saleh, farmer in Tunisia, tells us how breeding crops that combine properties of indigenous wild varieties has improved the quality and yield of his crops.
Producers: Clare Williamson and Benjie Guy
(Picture: a hand holding seeds. Credit: Getty Images.)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service with me Rebecca Kesbby. |
| 0:07.2 | Today we're talking about banking, not cash, but the priceless stuff of life itself. |
| 0:13.9 | Seeds. |
| 0:14.8 | In the permafrost mountains of Svalbard, we have about 1.1 million sin samples and we could store 4.5 million samples there. |
| 0:24.6 | How combining genetic material from wild plants can help us to grow hardier agricultural crops |
| 0:31.3 | resistant to climate change. Those new varieties can be grown in different seasons also. |
| 0:37.8 | So farmers need not to worry about the heavy rains. |
| 0:41.2 | Still, he can harvest with improved yield and resistance and tolerance to these stresses. |
| 0:48.0 | Investing for the future with the world's seed banks. |
| 0:51.5 | That's here on Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:59.6 | Thank you. world's seed banks. That's here on Business Daily from the BBC. Tucked away deep underground in a fireproof, floodproof, bomb-proof vault, a priceless collection. |
| 1:09.7 | Behind these heavy security doors, a precious bank containing not money, not gold or diamonds, |
| 1:18.3 | but seeds. |
| 1:19.7 | Well, in short, we're in the most biodiverse place on the planet. |
| 1:22.7 | This is the sort of thing you have in a bank. |
| 1:24.6 | It is literally a bank vault door. |
| 1:27.1 | Do you have to lock us in behind as well? |
| 1:29.1 | Well, yeah. Our guide is Dr Chris Cochell, a project coordinator at the Millennium Seed Bank for the Royal Botanic Gardens Q in the UK. |
| 1:39.8 | So this is an airlock going into the seed vault. Humidity is 15% relative humidity and 15 degrees centigrade. |
| 1:47.0 | It's much colder in here too. |
| 1:49.0 | Yes, notice it would be colder. |
| 1:51.0 | Yeah. Okay, so we're going through a third door now. |
... |
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