Cate Blanchett: The sound of the leaves underfoot really transported me back home
Cate Blanchett: to Australia the very first time I stumbled upon Wakehurst,
Cate Blanchett: and I found myself in the middle of England in a
Cate Blanchett: glade of eucalypts and Wollemi pines. And the Wollemi for me
Cate Blanchett: has a particular significance because they're a fossil, really, or
Cate Blanchett: a dinosaur tree that were thought to be extinct. And
Cate Blanchett: they were discovered in the Blue Mountains in the mid-
Cate Blanchett: 90s. And I got married in the late 90s in the Blue
Cate Blanchett: Mountains. And so the sound of the Wollemis and their
Cate Blanchett: fragrance and the fact that they've been preserved here in
Cate Blanchett: a place like Wakehurst. When I stumbled upon them the
Cate Blanchett: first time I came here, I stood here and I
Cate Blanchett: wept. And I wept because they could be lost, but
Cate Blanchett: they're being protected here at Wakehurst. But also as you
Cate Blanchett: wander through this incredibly unique and magical and precious glade,
Cate Blanchett: it's connected to so many other species from so many
Cate Blanchett: other parts of the world. And you realize that every
Cate Blanchett: tree, every plant, every flower, every seed, whilst it's specific
Cate Blanchett: to a territory, it's all interconnected. And it reminds you
Cate Blanchett: just how precious those songlines are, and they happen here
Cate Blanchett: at Wakehurst. It's a magical, magical place. Wakehurst is Kew's wild and beautiful
Cate Blanchett: botanic garden set deep in the heart of the Sussex
Cate Blanchett: countryside, a sanctuary for nature. You can lose yourself here
Cate Blanchett: as I did in the astonishing diversity of trees, plants,
Cate Blanchett: and grasses covering every inch of its sweeping grounds. But
Cate Blanchett: Wakehurst is so much more than a garden and a
Cate Blanchett: lovely day out. Beyond its beauty lies a living laboratory
Cate Blanchett: where groundbreaking research is shaping the very future of biodiversity.
Cate Blanchett: At the heart of Wakehurst is the Millennium Seed Bank.
Cate Blanchett: Its vaults, hidden underneath the hollows of these grounds, house
Cate Blanchett: almost 2. 5 billion seeds, 40,000 rare, important, and threatened
Cate Blanchett: species from almost every country and territory across the globe.
Cate Blanchett: And they're safely stored, ex situ, protected outside their natural
Cate Blanchett: habitat. It's a modern Noah's Ark, and it's the largest
Cate Blanchett: repository of wild seeds on earth and the most biodiverse
Cate Blanchett: place on our planet. I'm Cate Blanchett, and that experience
Cate Blanchett: that I had in the Wollemi pines was the catalyst
Cate Blanchett: that led me on a journey to becoming Kew's ambassador
Cate Blanchett: for Wakehurst and a champion of the Millennium Seed Bank.
Cate Blanchett: And on this journey, I've learned of the scope of
Cate Blanchett: the work that Wakehurst is doing to preserve the future
Cate Blanchett: of our planet because there's no way around it. We
Cate Blanchett: have to face the fact that our planet is in
Cate Blanchett: crisis. Climate change, deforestation, the relentless unsustainable use of our
Cate Blanchett: natural resources, species disappearing at a pace unprecedented in human
Cate Blanchett: history. Like most people, some days I despair, but the
Cate Blanchett: work being done at Wakehurst gives me hope. The Millennium
Cate Blanchett: Seed Bank holds within its vaults tools to restore habitats,
Cate Blanchett: to bring species back from the brink, to discover how little-
Cate Blanchett: known plants might become our future foods, our medicines, our
Cate Blanchett: materials. In this series we'll go behind the scenes of
Cate Blanchett: this extraordinary partnership to understand its humble roots, the work
Cate Blanchett: it's doing now, and the impact it could have on
Cate Blanchett: our future. And it's a true partnership, an international collaboration
Cate Blanchett: between visionary scientists and devoted collectors, working together on an
Cate Blanchett: insurance policy for our planet. Life begins with seeds, and
Cate Blanchett: so does our best chance to save it. Welcome to
Cate Blanchett: Unearthed: The Need for Seeds, episode one, the past. This
Cate Blanchett: year marks the 25th anniversary of the Millennium Seed Bank,
Cate Blanchett: or the MSB. It's now a world- leading initiative at
Cate Blanchett: the cutting edge of science, but it wasn't quite so cutting-
Cate Blanchett: edge in the beginning. Every great story starts somewhere, and
Cate Blanchett: ours begins over a quarter of a century ago. In
Cate Blanchett: this chapter, we'll meet the visionary people who saw the
Cate Blanchett: future coming.
Roger Smith: We sneaked onto the site and looked in the hole,
Roger Smith: and that is the point at which I said to Simon, "
Roger Smith: What have we started?" And from there on, there is
Roger Smith: only one way, which is out and up.
Cate Blanchett: And we'll understand how that vision is already bearing fruit.
Dan Duval: 100s of plants have been introduced working with the community,
Dan Duval: but this never would've happened if we didn't bank this in
Dan Duval: 2006 with MSB.
Cate Blanchett: And we'll hear from those continuing to build on the
Cate Blanchett: legacy who are just as passionate about it as the
Cate Blanchett: Seed Bank's founders.
Dr. Chris Cockel: Those wild relative seeds are now at these international crop-
Dr. Chris Cockel: breeding gene banks with the aim of making our domesticated
Dr. Chris Cockel: crops more able to withstand the pressures of climate change
Dr. Chris Cockel: and various pests and diseases that they might be faced
Dr. Chris Cockel: with in the future.
Cate Blanchett: But let's begin in a place that represents both the
Cate Blanchett: past and the present of this story. While I'm standing
Cate Blanchett: in an American prairie, it's full of native plants, and
Cate Blanchett: I can see rattlesnake master, which is a very tall, sort
Cate Blanchett: of beautiful silvery thistle, and this foxglove, and there's beardtongue, and there's black-
Cate Blanchett: eyed Susans, which I absolutely love. And I mean some
Cate Blanchett: of these grasses and plants are as tall as my
Cate Blanchett: shoulders. It's an American prairie, but I'm not in America.
Cate Blanchett: I am in the heart of Sussex in Wakehurst. And
Cate Blanchett: this landscape is only possible really because of the amazing
Cate Blanchett: work that the Millennium Seed Bank is doing, and more
Cate Blanchett: incongruous perhaps than an American prairie in East Sussex is
Cate Blanchett: the juxtaposition of this prairie with a quintessential English mansion
Cate Blanchett: just ahead. I'm here with Dr. Eleanor Brehman, who's the
Cate Blanchett: senior research leader in seed conservation.
Dr Eleanor Brehman: Hi, welcome to Wakehurst.
Cate Blanchett: Thank you. I mean, just in the distance, there is
Cate Blanchett: a grade one Elizabethan mansion and that was built around 1570.
Dr Eleanor Brehman: 1500s.
Cate Blanchett: Yeah.
Dr Eleanor Brehman: Yeah.
Cate Blanchett: And it's old stone. It's almost like something out of
Cate Blanchett: a storybook. So it's very old, but it feels really
Cate Blanchett: at odds with this experimental landscape that we are standing
Cate Blanchett: in. This wild landscape here at Wakehurst. Why did you
Cate Blanchett: want to meet me here?
Dr Eleanor Brehman: Well, because this is where seed banking started at Wakehurst.
Dr Eleanor Brehman: So the Seed Physiology department moved down from Kew in the
Dr Eleanor Brehman: 70s. We were based in the mansion originally and actually
Dr Eleanor Brehman: had a big walk- in freezer, like one of those
Dr Eleanor Brehman: butcher's freezers in the chapel. That was the original seed bank.
Cate Blanchett: The seed bank was in the chapel?
Dr Eleanor Brehman: And the physiology team were working up in Lady Price's
Dr Eleanor Brehman: bedroom, and they were doing some work on one of
Dr Eleanor Brehman: the mahogany desks once, and when she came around, and
Dr Eleanor Brehman: she was really not very happy that science was being
Dr Eleanor Brehman: undertaken on this heirloom of the family. So I think
Dr Eleanor Brehman: they got some lab benches in after that.
Cate Blanchett: So given that you were able to store seeds in
Cate Blanchett: a butcher's freezer in the mansion, that's not very high-
Cate Blanchett: tech. I mean, obviously the modern building that houses the
Cate Blanchett: seed bank now, for the past 25 years, it's got
Cate Blanchett: a lot more sophisticated freezers than, say, there or I
Cate Blanchett: would have at home. What are the facilities like there?
Cate Blanchett: How would you describe them?
Dr Eleanor Brehman: Yeah, I think when we were in the mansion, it
Dr Eleanor Brehman: was more in an experimental phase and we were trying
Dr Eleanor Brehman: to understand the seed biology that enables seeds to be
Dr Eleanor Brehman: dried and then stored at sub- zero temperatures to extend
Dr Eleanor Brehman: their lifespan. And we really wanted to know if that
Dr Eleanor Brehman: was going to work for wild plant species. Because it
Dr Eleanor Brehman: had already been done for agriculture, but they've quite uniform
Dr Eleanor Brehman: seeds. So it was that experimental stage, but then we'd
Dr Eleanor Brehman: proved the concept and in the 90s collected the UK
Dr Eleanor Brehman: flora, so that we could show that it really worked
Dr Eleanor Brehman: before going international. And the point of our new facilities,
Dr Eleanor Brehman: well now 25 years old, was the scale. We needed
Dr Eleanor Brehman: to scale up. So the technology still remained relatively simple.
Dr Eleanor Brehman: We're drying, and we're putting in an airtight container and
Dr Eleanor Brehman: we're putting in a freezer. So yes, the freezers are
Dr Eleanor Brehman: bigger, they've got roller shelving so we can maximize the
Dr Eleanor Brehman: space usage, but at the end of the day, it's
Dr Eleanor Brehman: just a - 20 freezer, but it's conserving all this biodiversity
Dr Eleanor Brehman: from around the world.
Cate Blanchett: I mean, people obviously, if they're interested in building a
Cate Blanchett: garden, they buy seeds at their local gardening store. But
Cate Blanchett: why do you think it's so important at this juncture
Cate Blanchett: in human history that we gather and preserve seeds?
Dr Eleanor Brehman: 45% of all wild plants are faced with extinction. So
Dr Eleanor Brehman: the race is on, really, to conserve seeds from those
Dr Eleanor Brehman: species before it's too late and we've lost them forever.
Dr Eleanor Brehman: Because you don't know what you're losing until it's gone.
Dr Eleanor Brehman: Nobody's worked on these; we don't know whether that's the
Dr Eleanor Brehman: next medicine, whether it could improve our sustainable agriculture, what
Dr Eleanor Brehman: properties it has that we might find useful and might
Dr Eleanor Brehman: provide ecosystem services that we're depending on and we don't
Dr Eleanor Brehman: even realize.
Cate Blanchett: And the way those plants and species have an interdependent culture.
Dr Eleanor Brehman: Yeah. And interact with each other to form that ecosystem.
Cate Blanchett: So when you say that 45% of plant species are
Cate Blanchett: facing extinction, that isn't just reflective of the UK, is it?
Dr Eleanor Brehman: No.
Cate Blanchett: I mean, it's a global figure, right?
Dr Eleanor Brehman: Yeah. That's plants across the world. So in all environments,
Dr Eleanor Brehman: from pole to pole, from sea level to the tops
Dr Eleanor Brehman: of mountains, plants are feeling the pressure of human land
Dr Eleanor Brehman: use change, overexploitation, invasive species, pollution, and then climate change
Dr Eleanor Brehman: as well. So it's not a very friendly environment for
Dr Eleanor Brehman: a lot of our plants anymore.
Cate Blanchett: I don't know whether it's that I've specifically noticed that
Cate Blanchett: there's fewer plants around, but I have noticed, particularly in
Cate Blanchett: summer, when you go for a long drive, there are
Cate Blanchett: not as many bugs-
Dr Eleanor Brehman: No.
Cate Blanchett: - On the windshield.
Dr Eleanor Brehman: No.
Cate Blanchett: There's fewer butterflies, fewer bees when you're out in nature,
Cate Blanchett: not here in the American prairie, of course, but is
Cate Blanchett: that a direct effect of that 45% loss?
Dr Eleanor Brehman: Yeah, I mean, we've seen a dramatic decline in natural
Dr Eleanor Brehman: habitats all around the world. I mean, the human population
Dr Eleanor Brehman: is expanding, people need places to live, we need to
Dr Eleanor Brehman: grow food to eat. So those things have to happen,
Dr Eleanor Brehman: but we need to start doing those things in a
Dr Eleanor Brehman: smarter way and realizing that we have to do those
Dr Eleanor Brehman: things in harmony with nature rather than seeing nature as
Dr Eleanor Brehman: a never- ending resource that will just keep being there
Dr Eleanor Brehman: or keep bouncing back. We actually need to be supporting
Dr Eleanor Brehman: nature. And one of the ways we're doing that is
Dr Eleanor Brehman: through seed banking so that we're buying time for these
Dr Eleanor Brehman: species, which are feeling a load of pressures in their
Dr Eleanor Brehman: natural environments. And we have had partners who go out
Dr Eleanor Brehman: on a collecting trip, and something that they rescued earlier
Dr Eleanor Brehman: in the year, they go back, and it's gone. They
Dr Eleanor Brehman: can't make that collection, and that happens more and more
Dr Eleanor Brehman: frequently, unfortunately. We do have wonderful moments as well where
Dr Eleanor Brehman: they discover plants that have never been described by science.
Dr Eleanor Brehman: So it can work both ways, and I think that's
Dr Eleanor Brehman: the beauty of seed banking and this collaborative work around
Dr Eleanor Brehman: the world is, its discovery. There's always something new to
Dr Eleanor Brehman: learn, and these experts are just giving all of their
Dr Eleanor Brehman: time and their knowledge and their passion to making sure that
Dr Eleanor Brehman: we have the best possible outcomes for plants going forward
Dr Eleanor Brehman: as we can.
Cate Blanchett: The Millennium Seed Bank is the largest ex situ wild
Cate Blanchett: plant conservation program in the world. When you say " wild
Cate Blanchett: seeds," what do you actually mean?
Dr Eleanor Brehman: Yeah, so it means that they're seeds that have been
Dr Eleanor Brehman: collected from their natural habitat, so where they would normally
Dr Eleanor Brehman: grow. So this is why we work with partners all
Dr Eleanor Brehman: around the world to help them conserve their native floras.
Dr Eleanor Brehman: And that's very different to going to an agricultural setting
Dr Eleanor Brehman: and taking cultivated material, which are the seeds that you'd
Dr Eleanor Brehman: buy in the packets in the garden shop. And it also
Dr Eleanor Brehman: means that you are conserving a huge amount of diversity
Dr Eleanor Brehman: because these plants in their natural habitats are adapting to
Dr Eleanor Brehman: thrive and survive in these changing conditions. And so by
Dr Eleanor Brehman: capturing seeds from populations across that species' natural range, you
Dr Eleanor Brehman: can capture all of this diversity. And the amazing thing
Dr Eleanor Brehman: about seed banking is that you can store all of that in a
Dr Eleanor Brehman: really small space, and for a relatively low cost. I
Dr Eleanor Brehman: mean, it's a relatively low- tech, simple solution to a
Dr Eleanor Brehman: really big problem.
Cate Blanchett: How much has the mission changed in that 25 years?
Cate Blanchett: It was so state-of- the- art and cutting- edge, but
Cate Blanchett: also the future probably seemed much further away than it
Cate Blanchett: does here and now.
Dr Eleanor Brehman: I mean, when it first opened, there was more of
Dr Eleanor Brehman: an acquisition phase. We were just trying to get plants
Dr Eleanor Brehman: to be prevented from extinction, get the seeds into the
Dr Eleanor Brehman: bank, and know they were safe. But then as we
Dr Eleanor Brehman: got more and more species in, that allowed us to
Dr Eleanor Brehman: understand more and more plants and their ecology, and actually this
Dr Eleanor Brehman: information that we get through germinating the seed and the
Dr Eleanor Brehman: data that we're amassing from the field when we collect
Dr Eleanor Brehman: the seeds and all of the processing is really, really important
Dr Eleanor Brehman: for restoration. And we are then using these seeds. You know it is a bank;
Dr Eleanor Brehman: you make deposits and withdrawals, right? So the seeds are
Dr Eleanor Brehman: coming back out of the bank. It's not their end
Dr Eleanor Brehman: resting place. And the real focus is on supporting active
Dr Eleanor Brehman: ecological restoration programs in spaces where the environment is stable
Dr Eleanor Brehman: enough to be putting these rare and threatened plants back
Dr Eleanor Brehman: into the landscape and that they will still be there
Dr Eleanor Brehman: in 10, 20 years' time.
Cate Blanchett: The times where I've been in the seed bank, there's
Cate Blanchett: invariably been students and researchers from all around the world.
Cate Blanchett: Is it important for them to come here?
Dr Eleanor Brehman: We have really close relationships with our partners, and actually
Dr Eleanor Brehman: Australia's a really good case in point because we've been
Dr Eleanor Brehman: working with them since 2000. During that time we've helped
Dr Eleanor Brehman: develop a wild plant seed bank in every state and
Dr Eleanor Brehman: territory in Australia, and they've now formed their own Australian
Dr Eleanor Brehman: seed bank partnership. So that's kind of the journey that
Dr Eleanor Brehman: we want to go on with all of our partners.
Dr Eleanor Brehman: We provide training, we provide resources. Initially we might provide
Dr Eleanor Brehman: some funding to get them out to the field and
Dr Eleanor Brehman: make those initial collections and help them start, but the
Dr Eleanor Brehman: idea is for them all to stand on their own and be
Dr Eleanor Brehman: organizations who can manage their own floras.
Cate Blanchett: We'll come back to Australia later, but we're having this
Cate Blanchett: conversation, as I mentioned earlier, in the middle of an
Cate Blanchett: American prairie landscape in the middle of Sussex. It's a
Cate Blanchett: landscape that's made up of seeds that are collected from
Cate Blanchett: the USA and brought back here to Wakehurst.
Dr Eleanor Brehman: The horticultural team went out to the states and made
Dr Eleanor Brehman: collections from existing prairies over there so that we had
Dr Eleanor Brehman: that authentic seed mix to put into the prairie land
Dr Eleanor Brehman: here. But we've also got those rare, threatened, endangered species
Dr Eleanor Brehman: which we collected. We've got in the seed bank, grew
Dr Eleanor Brehman: on, and then have mixed in to this kind of
Dr Eleanor Brehman: mosaic of planting here. So that visitors could engage with
Dr Eleanor Brehman: that story and understand that plants in all corners of
Dr Eleanor Brehman: the world are under threat, but they're beautiful and create
Dr Eleanor Brehman: these amazing landscapes that we want to be in and
Dr Eleanor Brehman: just make us feel happier. And then it has the
Dr Eleanor Brehman: links to the seed bank as well, and I love
Dr Eleanor Brehman: that about Wakehurst is that there's so much collaboration between
Dr Eleanor Brehman: the seed bank and what's going on in the landscape.
Dr Eleanor Brehman: It's more than 50% of the plants in the Wakehurst landscape
Dr Eleanor Brehman: have been grown from seed that have been collected from
Dr Eleanor Brehman: all around the world.
Cate Blanchett: Now a seed holds so much potential. But there are
Cate Blanchett: also many different types of seeds, and as we've heard,
Cate Blanchett: what sets the Millennium Seed Bank apart is the fact
Cate Blanchett: that every single seed banked here is wild.
Dr. Chris Cockel: I guess the unique selling point of the Millennium Seed
Dr. Chris Cockel: Bank is that we're a wild species seed bank. So
Dr. Chris Cockel: in general, we don't bank domesticated crop seeds. Our role
Dr. Chris Cockel: is to collect the wild and then make them available.
Dr. Chris Cockel: So that was what the project was all about, was
Dr. Chris Cockel: making those seeds available for breeders.
Cate Blanchett: This is Dr. Chris Cockel. He's now the UK's conservation
Cate Blanchett: projects coordinator at MSB. But before that, he headed up
Cate Blanchett: a project that focused on collecting the wild relatives of
Cate Blanchett: crops that you and I would think of as food.
Cate Blanchett: Now for many of those species, there's very little family
Cate Blanchett: resemblance that remains.
Dr. Chris Cockel: So what we have here are some wild banana seeds.
Dr. Chris Cockel: They're quite large, half a centimeter across perhaps, and the
Dr. Chris Cockel: banana those came from were very small. So there's a
Dr. Chris Cockel: misconception, I guess, that bananas come from the Caribbean. They
Dr. Chris Cockel: were collected in Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand. So what we have
Dr. Chris Cockel: here is a wild banana plant from Vietnam, and this
Dr. Chris Cockel: was grown from seed, from 2016, and the seeds came
Dr. Chris Cockel: from one of our partners for the Adapting Agriculture to
Dr. Chris Cockel: Climate Change project. The main difference you'll see between a
Dr. Chris Cockel: wild banana plant and a cultivated banana plant is the
Dr. Chris Cockel: fruit actually. Part of the domestication process, including with bananas,
Dr. Chris Cockel: is that humans have over millennia created fruit and vegetables
Dr. Chris Cockel: that are palatable, that are edible, that are high- yielding.
Dr. Chris Cockel: So in the case of the wild banana plant, the
Dr. Chris Cockel: fruit is much smaller and it's full of seeds, whereas
Dr. Chris Cockel: the domesticated Cavendish banana, the ones from the supermarket, it
Dr. Chris Cockel: doesn't have seeds in it because they're all generated from clones.
Dr. Chris Cockel: And what you see in the center of the Cavendish
Dr. Chris Cockel: banana is just the remnant of seeds, and also there's
Dr. Chris Cockel: a lot of flesh that you can eat, whereas in
Dr. Chris Cockel: the wild banana, there's virtually nothing that you would think
Dr. Chris Cockel: you would want to eat in there. These plants are
Dr. Chris Cockel: not genetically modified. They are the product of, as I
Dr. Chris Cockel: say, millennia of traditional breeding methods where farmers have taken
Dr. Chris Cockel: different varieties and crossed them with one another to bring
Dr. Chris Cockel: out the traits that we want in terms of yield
Dr. Chris Cockel: and size, taste. There's something called the genetic bottleneck, where
Dr. Chris Cockel: you've come from a very broad genetic base to a
Dr. Chris Cockel: very narrow genetic base, and this makes the domesticated crops
Dr. Chris Cockel: vulnerable to pests and diseases and to changes in climate.
Cate Blanchett: It's taken human ingenuity to evolve edible fruits and vegetables
Cate Blanchett: as we know and consume them today, but the same
Cate Blanchett: processes that increase their attractiveness to us as food also
Cate Blanchett: makes them vulnerable to an increasingly threatening future. However, there
Cate Blanchett: are potential solutions to that problem within the wider family tree.
Dr. Chris Cockel: There are also still the wild relatives that are out
Dr. Chris Cockel: in the wild, and they contain a lot of adaptive
Dr. Chris Cockel: traits that have been lost in the domesticated crops. So that's
Dr. Chris Cockel: what we're trying to capture when we're collecting the seeds
Dr. Chris Cockel: of these wild species. There's a scale between wild and
Dr. Chris Cockel: domesticated, so we're now at the fully domesticated. There are
Dr. Chris Cockel: intermediate stages as well, semi- domesticated, and these are called
Dr. Chris Cockel: heritage varieties. And then there's the truly wild, and the
Dr. Chris Cockel: further away from the domesticated you get, the more difficult
Dr. Chris Cockel: it is to breed those wild ones with the domesticated
Dr. Chris Cockel: because they're almost different species. In some cases they are
Dr. Chris Cockel: different species.
Cate Blanchett: These are called crop wild relatives, and they're really important.
Dr. Chris Cockel: The important thing about the crop wild relatives is that
Dr. Chris Cockel: we can take those adaptive traits, and through traditional breeding
Dr. Chris Cockel: methods, we can breed back into the domesticated crops some
Dr. Chris Cockel: of those important traits that have been lost. And by reintroducing
Dr. Chris Cockel: some of those lost wild traits, you can make our
Dr. Chris Cockel: domesticated crops more capable to withstand the different pressures they're
Dr. Chris Cockel: going to face in the future.
Cate Blanchett: So much of the work of the partnership projects of
Cate Blanchett: the Millennium Seed Bank are future facing and will focus
Cate Blanchett: specifically on the work going on in order to future-
Cate Blanchett: proof in episode three. But for now, let's step back
Cate Blanchett: in time, not as far back as the dawn of
Cate Blanchett: agriculture before crops were ever domesticated, but to the early
Cate Blanchett: 1970s, when it was agricultural industry itself that inspired an idea.
Roger Smith: Looking back, what we were actually doing was seeing how
Roger Smith: much of the technology that they used in crops to
Roger Smith: conserve seeds could be successfully applied to undomesticated, wild plants.
Roger Smith: And it was a case of then beg, stealing, borrowing
Roger Smith: ideas to solve the problems that we had of seed storage.
Cate Blanchett: This is Roger Smith; he's one of the founding fathers
Cate Blanchett: of the Millennium Seed Bank. And now decades later, he's
Cate Blanchett: striding over to meet us in a brightly colored stripy
Cate Blanchett: jumper, with a mysterious smile.
Roger Smith: I came in 1974 as the seed collector, and then
Roger Smith: I became the head of the seed bank project in 2000.
Cate Blanchett: We talked to him back outside the old stone mansion
Cate Blanchett: where it all began.
Roger Smith: At Kew, they had a refrigerated collection of seeds, which
Roger Smith: they used to share with other botanic gardens, and it was
Roger Smith: big enough when it did come down here to go
Roger Smith: into the boot of a Ford Cortina; that's how it
Roger Smith: was transported down. And it went into the chapel. So
Roger Smith: if you like, the chapel changed from saving souls to
Roger Smith: saving seeds.
Cate Blanchett: But the job of saving seeds was new and it
Cate Blanchett: was not straightforward.
Roger Smith: So we were covering everything from " Can you actually collect
Roger Smith: these seeds," and then insufficient number. Then we had to learn how
Roger Smith: to clean seeds so that you ended up with just
Roger Smith: seeds and not seeds and bits of rubbish because you're
Roger Smith: trying to get the smallest volume that you can of
Roger Smith: viable seeds. The other thing you can't do is damage
Roger Smith: the seeds. And we had a few experiments in there
Roger Smith: where we did end up with flour, rather than seeds.
Roger Smith: It was learning just like that as you went along;
Roger Smith: not one question off, move on to the next. At
Roger Smith: the same time we learned keeping them in the building,
Roger Smith: in the open, they would die or begin to die
Roger Smith: in a couple of years. So you had to find out
Roger Smith: how to keep them dry and viable. And then when
Roger Smith: you've got the seeds, you've then got to learn how
Roger Smith: to germinate them to turn them back into plants because
Roger Smith: if you can't turn them back into plants, then what
Roger Smith: was the point? And so it goes on, and never-
Roger Smith: ending sort of beg, steal, or borrow any idea you
Roger Smith: could find that appeared to solve the problem you'd just
Roger Smith: bumped into. We had 20 years of learning how to
Roger Smith: become an overnight sensation.
Cate Blanchett: And 20 years of learning came with its own particular challenges.
Roger Smith: We started to accumulate more research evidence at the same
Roger Smith: time that the conditions that we were putting them into
Roger Smith: were the best for the seeds, with a compromise for
Roger Smith: the economics of running it and the health and safety,
Roger Smith: because at one point we had a room that was
Roger Smith: not at - 20; it was at - 40. And the minute you'd say
Roger Smith: minus 40, you have to go through a whole set
Roger Smith: of medical examinations to make sure you are not going
Roger Smith: to have a heart attack when you walk in or
Roger Smith: walk out. It was a little bit of a Boy
Roger Smith: Scouts adventure, I suppose, if you like, in that respect.
Roger Smith: It was not, " Here you are, sit there, this is what
Roger Smith: you do." It was a case of " This is what
Roger Smith: we want to do. How do you think we do
Roger Smith: it?" It was adventurous.
Cate Blanchett: There's a strong thread, I think, that you'll hear throughout
Cate Blanchett: this series, and that's the passion and determination of like-
Cate Blanchett: minded people from across the globe not taking no for
Cate Blanchett: an answer. People who were pushing the existing boundaries of
Cate Blanchett: science as they play their part in securing the future
Cate Blanchett: of our planet. And that passion was there from the
Cate Blanchett: beginning. For the people at the heart of the MSB, it's
Cate Blanchett: not a job; it's a true vocation.
Roger Smith: I think I had thought I was joining a job.
Roger Smith: Where it became an obsession. And yes, I suppose more
Roger Smith: and more people in the world of biology and botany
Roger Smith: who were concerned about species loss but didn't know what
Roger Smith: to do about it. For us, the mentality was, " Well,
Roger Smith: we've got to start somewhere, and we'll find out as
Roger Smith: we go along." Because that's what humans have always done.
Roger Smith: And so that when the Millennium Commission comes along and
Roger Smith: offers large sums of money for something that is not
Roger Smith: business as usual but is something of a grander scale,
Roger Smith: they wanted it to... I reread the establishing paperwork; they
Roger Smith: wanted the projects to last for the next 30 generations,
Roger Smith: which is another millennium. We'll happily... By that time we
Roger Smith: had seen research that showed that some seeds could last
Roger Smith: for even longer than that. So we could meet their
Roger Smith: sort of ambition. And we had enough partners who'd visited,
Roger Smith: learned around the world that we could say, and " We'll
Roger Smith: work on a global scale, and we'll do 10%," which is the
Roger Smith: rate at which species are reported to be becoming threatened with
Roger Smith: extinction. Having got that, I moved my job to go
Roger Smith: and meet partners and persuade them, would they join in.
Roger Smith: Made relatively easy by that time by the Convention on
Roger Smith: Biological Diversity, which had been, I think, in 1993, and
Roger Smith: there is my favorite bit in the preamble, which says
Roger Smith: that lack of full scientific certainty should not be a
Roger Smith: reason for not acting. So they all signed up and
Roger Smith: stood up, and then the rest, as they say, is history.
Cate Blanchett: If they hadn't signed up and stood up, that history
Cate Blanchett: would look very different today, and so would our future.
Cate Blanchett: I was really, really struck by Roger recounting the early
Cate Blanchett: days of the Millennium Seed Bank. I mean, ultimately it
Cate Blanchett: was a group of people who strongly believed in action,
Cate Blanchett: not just talking about it, but action to preserve our
Cate Blanchett: planet. They might've been thinking about seeds, but they were
Cate Blanchett: thinking big. And the Millennium Seed Bank still thinks big
Cate Blanchett: today. Chris Cockel worked with partners in 25 countries around
Cate Blanchett: the world to coordinate seed collecting efforts for the Crop
Cate Blanchett: Wild Relatives project.
Dr. Chris Cockel: So our partners went out and collected the seeds of the
Dr. Chris Cockel: wild relatives. They sent two- thirds of the collections to
Dr. Chris Cockel: us, and they retained one- third of the collection in their
Dr. Chris Cockel: home countries. And then further down the line, our role
Dr. Chris Cockel: was to send a portion of those seeds to crop
Dr. Chris Cockel: breeders. So from the very start of the project we
Dr. Chris Cockel: had an end use for these seeds. There were two years spent
Dr. Chris Cockel: at the very beginning of the project, from 2011 to 2013, when
Dr. Chris Cockel: a gap analysis was conducted. And this basically looked at
Dr. Chris Cockel: what was already stored in seed banks around the world
Dr. Chris Cockel: and also decided which were the priority crops. And it
Dr. Chris Cockel: turned out that almost 30% of those wild relatives were
Dr. Chris Cockel: not represented in seed banks at all, and up to
Dr. Chris Cockel: 95% of them were not geographically represented. So you are
Dr. Chris Cockel: missing a lot of the genetic diversity that you get
Dr. Chris Cockel: from collecting species from across its geographic range. So for
Dr. Chris Cockel: instance, one of the very basic crop wild relatives we
Dr. Chris Cockel: were collecting was the relative of the carrot. So whereas
Dr. Chris Cockel: the domesticated carrot that you would buy in the supermarket is a
Dr. Chris Cockel: nice, long orange vegetable, the wild relative is just a
Dr. Chris Cockel: gnarly root that you probably wouldn't want to eat. It's
Dr. Chris Cockel: almost like a weed. And that was what was missing
Dr. Chris Cockel: in existing collections. And so that material wasn't available for
Dr. Chris Cockel: breeders to use. The project focused on 29 important crops;
Dr. Chris Cockel: some crops will have more wild relatives than others, like
Dr. Chris Cockel: bananas, only have a few, but aubergine have quite a
Dr. Chris Cockel: lot. You would've thought that the wild relatives of something
Dr. Chris Cockel: as common as a potato would be well banked and
Dr. Chris Cockel: collected, but not at all. That was one of the
Dr. Chris Cockel: really high- priority crops to collect from, and that was
Dr. Chris Cockel: done by our partners in South America, which is where
Dr. Chris Cockel: potatoes originate. We also collected the cereals, which were collected
Dr. Chris Cockel: mostly in what's called the Fertile Crescent in the Eastern
Dr. Chris Cockel: Mediterranean and places like Cyprus and in Italy and Spain.
Dr. Chris Cockel: We collected African and Asian rice, different varieties relating to
Dr. Chris Cockel: that. Virtually everything we eat is, well, yeah, I mean,
Dr. Chris Cockel: I'm just thinking about what I would eat in my
Dr. Chris Cockel: breakfast. I'm having a slice of bread, which is made
Dr. Chris Cockel: out of wheat, and it's just a grass you're eating,
Dr. Chris Cockel: so it's all linked.
Cate Blanchett: But collecting seeds is not always plain sailing.
Dr. Chris Cockel: Our partners in Brazil, for example, collecting rice wild relatives
Dr. Chris Cockel: in the tributaries of the Amazon, they were faced with
Dr. Chris Cockel: caiman in the river. So then they were sort of wading
Dr. Chris Cockel: around in the Amazon River, and they were worried about crocodiles.
Dr. Chris Cockel: In other countries, our partners in Lebanon, where we were collecting
Dr. Chris Cockel: a lot of the cereal wild relatives, of course, there's
Dr. Chris Cockel: human conflict going on in some of those places, and
Dr. Chris Cockel: they weren't able to get to areas where the wild
Dr. Chris Cockel: relatives existed because of security issues.
Cate Blanchett: Once again, this was a partnership populated by passionate and
Cate Blanchett: determined people. And so despite these issues, the seeds were
Cate Blanchett: collected and then stored for safekeeping.
Dr. Chris Cockel: So those wild relative seeds are now at these international crop-
Dr. Chris Cockel: breeding gene banks, and they're available to be incorporated into
Dr. Chris Cockel: breeding projects with the aim of making our domesticated crops
Dr. Chris Cockel: more able to withstand the pressures of climate change and
Dr. Chris Cockel: various pests and diseases that they might be faced with
Dr. Chris Cockel: in the future.
Cate Blanchett: It's become very clear to me that the Millennium Seed
Cate Blanchett: Bank thrives because of its global partnerships and that this
Cate Blanchett: isn't just a future- facing mission. Also, it's about deposits
Cate Blanchett: and withdrawals in the present. And the first- ever withdrawal
Cate Blanchett: request struck a very personal note for me.
Dan Duval: In late December 2019, there were a number of major
Dan Duval: bushfires around South Australia. One of them, which started on the
Dan Duval: 20th of December 2019, was in Adelaide Hills, and it
Dan Duval: was basically catastrophic fire conditions around the state. So this
Dan Duval: is where we have very strong winds and very high temperatures.
Dan Duval: And this fire that started on the 20th of December was finally put out
Dan Duval: on the 3rd of January 2020, but in that time it burnt out 24,
Dan Duval: 000 hectares, probably 80 to 90 homes were destroyed.
Cate Blanchett: As with any disaster on this scale, it's not just
Cate Blanchett: the built environment and we humans that suffer; all of
Cate Blanchett: nature suffers. Dan Duval is senior seed collections officer for
Cate Blanchett: the South Australian Seed Conservation Centre in Adelaide, which has
Cate Blanchett: been working with the Millennium Seed Bank since 2003.
Dan Duval: At the time, we were monitoring a number of threatened
Dan Duval: species within small reserves in that area, and unfortunately, there
Dan Duval: were a number of localized population extinctions of threatened species
Dan Duval: that occurred within that fire scar. One of those species
Dan Duval: that we thought we lost were a couple of populations
Dan Duval: of what we call clover glycine. Clover glycine is a
Dan Duval: nationally vulnerable species, so it's something of significance nationwide in
Dan Duval: Australia. The populations in Lobethal Park were banked some years
Dan Duval: ago, probably 2004. And because we weren't seeing a good
Dan Duval: recovery of this plant species post- fire, we knew we needed
Dan Duval: to actually utilize some seeds from the seed bank and
Dan Duval: use them in post- fire recovery work to reintroduce this
Dan Duval: plant species. We couldn't use the seeds from the Seed
Dan Duval: Conservation Centre for recovery work within the fire scar because
Dan Duval: the population we had banked here in Australia was from
Dan Duval: a different location. Fortunately, we had a collection banked near
Dan Duval: the fire scar that we'd actually banked with MSB in
Dan Duval: the UK.
Cate Blanchett: But bringing those seeds back wasn't easy.
Dan Duval: One of the challenges was we were repatriating a species
Dan Duval: of native plant that was rare from Australia back into country.
Cate Blanchett: Now for any of you who have visited my homeland,
Cate Blanchett: you'll know that even bringing muddy boots into the country
Cate Blanchett: is difficult, let alone reintroducing a whole plant species.
Dan Duval: Our quarantine service had never dealt with this before, so
Dan Duval: they had no process for us to be able to
Dan Duval: repatriate the seeds back into our country. So it was
Dan Duval: an interesting process to go through to actually ship native
Dan Duval: seeds. Originally collected from South Australia, stored in the UK
Dan Duval: back into Australia.
Cate Blanchett: Returning the seeds to Australia was just the beginning.
Dan Duval: The most important thing is to utilize every seed that
Dan Duval: we received in the sample. So after nicking the seeds
Dan Duval: to remove the physical dormancy and germinate them, and the first
Dan Duval: thing we do was grow the seeds and plant them
Dan Duval: in a seed orchard. So we want to turn the 100 seeds
Dan Duval: or so that we received into 100s of plants that
Dan Duval: we can use for reintroduction. We planted seeds that we
Dan Duval: germinated in the lab into pots that we then grew
Dan Duval: for a period to ensure they were viable. And then
Dan Duval: the successful plants were then transplanted to what we call a
Dan Duval: seed production area, which are large raised tank beds that
Dan Duval: we then harvest plants or harvest seeds from. Those plants
Dan Duval: are still in the seed orchard today and are still flowering
Dan Duval: and setting seed and still being utilized in projects. Walked
Dan Duval: past it yesterday.
Cate Blanchett: But of course, the habitat that the seeds were originally
Cate Blanchett: collected in was a very different one to this new fire-
Cate Blanchett: scarred version.
Dan Duval: The landscape post- fire was completely different to that prior
Dan Duval: to the fire in the sense that it was almost
Dan Duval: a moonscape. There was no vegetation cover. There was an
Dan Duval: ash layer that was a few centimeters thick. So when
Dan Duval: you think about a few months earlier when you could
Dan Duval: have visited the glycine, it was a quite shady habitat growing of
Dan Duval: mosses, south- facing slopes. It's taken some years for that
Dan Duval: landscape to settle down and for that shade or canopy
Dan Duval: cover to develop and for that ash layer to become
Dan Duval: more minimal. So in 2022, we introduced our first plants
Dan Duval: of clover glycine to three sites within the fire scar.
Dan Duval: When a fire event of this scale comes in, there's
Dan Duval: not a capacity for these small populations to survive these
Dan Duval: events. So what we need to do is produce a
Dan Duval: resilient population that can survive these sort of events, that
Dan Duval: can compete with introduced species that can attract pollinators. And
Dan Duval: that's why we've been reintroducing the clover glycine since 2022.
Dan Duval: So we've reintroduced hundreds of plants to some of these
Dan Duval: sites now, and monitoring back in June by volunteers have
Dan Duval: got populations surviving up to 100%. So some populations: 75%, 80%, and
Dan Duval: some of these populations are now 100% from year to
Dan Duval: year. So we're getting success over time. We think we're
Dan Duval: doing well, and we're now getting to the point where
Dan Duval: those populations are at least equivalent or more to what
Dan Duval: the original population was pre- fire. There's more work being
Dan Duval: done, and more clover glycine will be introduced.
Cate Blanchett: And the long- standing collaboration with the team at Wakehurst
Cate Blanchett: has been key, even up to the present day.
Dan Duval: The partnership with MSB has been very significant for the SA Seed
Dan Duval: Conservation Centre, partly because the program wouldn't have commenced without
Dan Duval: the support of the Millennium Seed Bank, but also the
Dan Duval: sharing of knowledge and expertise. We have a seed bank
Dan Duval: here in Australia, but if anything were to happen to
Dan Duval: our collections, at least we know that we've got these
Dan Duval: collections that are managed very well in the UK by
Dan Duval: MSB and that we can call on these insurance collections
Dan Duval: that are stored in the UK when we need them.
Cate Blanchett: Listening to Dan, you begin to grasp the far- reaching
Cate Blanchett: impact of a project set in motion decades ago by
Cate Blanchett: Roger Smith and his colleagues, Simon Linington and Giles Coode‑
Cate Blanchett: Adams. From makeshift lab benches in the old mansion to
Cate Blanchett: a state- of- the- art facility sunk deep beneath the
Cate Blanchett: grounds in Wakehurst, it's an extraordinary journey. And I wondered,
Cate Blanchett: did they ever have a moment when the sheer gravity
Cate Blanchett: of their idea truly settled upon them when they realized
Cate Blanchett: the scale of what they'd begun?
Roger Smith: The only time I panicked was when they had started
Roger Smith: to build and they had dug the hole into which
Roger Smith: the second floor was going to be sunk. And Simon
Roger Smith: and I, on a Friday, we sneaked onto the site
Roger Smith: and looked in the hole, and that is the point
Roger Smith: at which I said to Simon, " What have we started?"
Roger Smith: And from there on, there is only one way, which
Roger Smith: is out and up.
Cate Blanchett: Taking part in this series marked the first time in
Cate Blanchett: many years that Roger had returned to Wakehurst. And as
Cate Blanchett: he stood outside the old stone mansion, 51 years on
Cate Blanchett: from that old butcher's freezer, he reflected on his work
Cate Blanchett: and all that had stemmed from it.
Roger Smith: Am I proud? I'm proudest of the fact that a
Roger Smith: strange, ragbag of individuals, in which I include myself quite
Roger Smith: happily, should come together and do something that had global
Roger Smith: significance, we hope. It is 51 years since I walked
Roger Smith: in with hair and not really knowing what I'd come
Roger Smith: to and what was expected of me. So coming back
Roger Smith: today has been quite... I even drove the same route
Roger Smith: that I drove from home to come into work. A
Roger Smith: lot has changed. It's quite emotional to be back in a
Roger Smith: confusing way because what you do is to regret the
Roger Smith: things you could have done better. And I wouldn't say
Roger Smith: downplay the things you did that worked well. But yes,
Roger Smith: you will remember those occasions as you think, " Oh, if
Roger Smith: only they could replay the tape," and you'd get there.
Roger Smith: But on the whole, it's been fun.
Cate Blanchett: They were a self- proclaimed, strange ragbag of individuals who, over
Cate Blanchett: 50 years ago, sowed the seeds of a small project
Cate Blanchett: with a big vision. A project that has since grown
Cate Blanchett: into a global endeavor with branches all over the world,
Cate Blanchett: sustained by remarkable people united in their mission to use
Cate Blanchett: the power of wild seeds to secure the future of
Cate Blanchett: our planet. In our next episode, we'll be moving from
Cate Blanchett: the mansion to the modern building that houses the MSB
Cate Blanchett: today. We'll go behind- the- scenes into the laboratories and
Cate Blanchett: the vaults themselves to uncover the extraordinary science of seed
Cate Blanchett: processing and preservation. Seeds we're banking on for our future.
Cate Blanchett: I'm Cate Blanchett, Kew's ambassador for Wakehurst, and this is
Cate Blanchett: Unearthed: The Need for Seeds. Find us wherever you get
Cate Blanchett: your podcasts, and please follow us so you don't miss
Cate Blanchett: a moment of our story. And I invite you to
Cate Blanchett: join me in supporting the vital work of the MSB
Cate Blanchett: by making a donation today. Just click the link in
Cate Blanchett: the episode description to learn more. Until next time, thanks
Cate Blanchett: for listening.