Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren vog obam here. If you've never heard
Speaker 1: of a seed bank, the basic idea is this, when
Speaker 1: the apocalypse is over and the forests are nothing but
Speaker 1: smoking ruins in the fields, barren of grain, fear not.
Speaker 1: We can reboot the world thanks to our bank seeds
Speaker 1: stored in bunker's strategically located from here to eternity. These
Speaker 1: fall Bard International Seed Vault in Norway, for instance, currently
Speaker 1: holds more than eight hundred and eighty thousand seeds and
Speaker 1: has the capacity to hold up to two point five billion.
Speaker 1: Seeds are pretty amazing forms of reproduction. All you need
Speaker 1: to do is dry them out and freeze them solid,
Speaker 1: and they can last for years. It's a comforting thought
Speaker 1: and acep civilizations sleeve and the seemingly less and less
Speaker 1: unlikely scenario that we self destruct. The u n's Global
Speaker 1: Strategy for Plant Conservation plans to bank sev of all
Speaker 1: plant species by but hold that arguably comforting thought a
Speaker 1: sing to a study from researchers at the Royal Botanic
Speaker 1: Gardens Queue, there's a significant catch. They discovered that a
Speaker 1: whole host of plant seeds just can't be banked, including avocado, cacao,
Speaker 1: and mango. Their findings, which were published in a November
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen issue of the journal Nature Plants, detail how
Speaker 1: a full thirty three percent of tree species alone are
Speaker 1: on this list, including oak and chestnut trees. We're still
Speaker 1: thirty six percent of our critically endangered species are also unbankable,
Speaker 1: and that's not even counting of the regular old endangered
Speaker 1: plants or of the vulnerable ones. So why can't these
Speaker 1: seeds be banked? Apparently not all seeds like the drying
Speaker 1: out process, and for this they are labeled recalcitrant seeds,
Speaker 1: which seems a little unfair calling a seed stubborn just
Speaker 1: because it can't tolerate dehydration as a bit rich coming
Speaker 1: from species that can barely last two days without water. Luckily,
Speaker 1: there's a way out of this jam, and it involves
Speaker 1: liquid nitrogen, which is always fun. Yes, to make sure
Speaker 1: we've got all our seeds safely tucked away in indefinite storage,
Speaker 1: we have to resort to cryo preservation, just like Ted
Speaker 1: Williams and all the other immortals being kept on ice.
Speaker 1: All one has to do is dissect the seed pry
Speaker 1: out its embryo and plunge it into smoking cold nitrogen.
Speaker 1: Instead of storing seeds at a conventional negative twenty degrees
Speaker 1: celsius that's negative four degrees fahrenheit, going cry oh will
Speaker 1: keep these finicky seeds in suspended animation at a subglacial
Speaker 1: temperature of negative a hundred and ninety six degrees celsius
Speaker 1: that's negative degrees fahrenheit. Some researchers advocate cryo preservation for
Speaker 1: all seeds, even the cooperative ones, because they'll last longer.
Speaker 1: Of course, a full aut apocalypse isn't the only reason
Speaker 1: for banking seeds. Climate change, habitat loss, and the growing
Speaker 1: threat of plant pathogens are already threatening biodiversity, so the
Speaker 1: time to preserve seeds is now, though taking steps to
Speaker 1: protect habitats and slow climate change would certainly be good
Speaker 1: as well. Today's episode was written by Machine Karen and
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more in this and
Speaker 1: lots of other super cool topics, visit our home planet,
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com. And for more podcasts from
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