LONDON — Britain is to protect Australia's plants and trees by helping the emergency collection of seeds in areas devastated by wildfires and storing some of the rarest specimens in the world's biggest wild seed bank. Scientists from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London will help the emergency seed collection and store precious specimens at its Millennium Seed Bank (MSB), a giant trove of seeds which acts as an insurance policy for plants and trees. Over 2.3 billion seeds from 190 countries are stored in air-tight glass containers stacked in huge -20°C freezers underground and can be used to grow a new generation of plants in years to come. It currently has 41,000 different species. For the collecting, Kew scientists will work alongside colleagues in the Australian Seed Bank Partnership.

Source: International New York Times February 07, 2020 05:14 UTC