Why Seed Banks are Important

Why Seed Banks are Important
http://www.xseeds.com/why-seed-banks-are-important/

Back in ancient times, seeds needed to be protected from severe weather or animals. Now, they’re stored mainly for crop diversity because there are so many crop variations to accommodate different conditions, such as making plants drought resistant, more harvestable, resistant to frost, or adaptable to warmer climates. Crop varieties are kept in seed banks because those plants could have greater value as the times change. Maintaining a diverse crop avoids instances like the Irish Potato Famine that was mostly caused because the potato varieties planted by farmers were nearly identical to each other and vulnerable to the same diseases.

Other reasons to store seeds include man-made disasters, such as war, disease, climate change, which could cause some plant species to die out, or natural disasters, which can alter a region’s ecosystem, such as the tsunami that damaged rice crops in Malaysia and Sri Lanka in 2004. In that instance, seed banks were able to give farmers rice seeds so they could continue planting again. It’s also vital to keep seeds for research, especially for plants with medicinal purposes.