Massive effort underway to save endangered seeds

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Farmers and plant breeders around the globe are planting thousands of endangered seeds as part of an effort to save 100,000 varieties of food crops from extinction.

In many cases, only a handful of seeds remain from rare varieties of barley, rice and wheat whose history can be traced back to the Neolithic era, said Carey Fowler of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, who is speaking on Sunday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.

"If we don't do the job right, they are gone," he said in an interview.

The effort, which Fowler thinks is the biggest biological rescue effort ever undertaken, is aimed at rescuing seeds stored under less-than-optimal conditions in underfunded seed banks as well as those threatened by human and natural disasters.

The rescuers hope to preserve seed samples that might provide genetic traits needed to fight disease or address climate change. 

Massive effort underway to save endangered seeds

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