The Leningrad botanists who saved the first seed bank | Hacker News Reader

The Leningrad botanists who saved the first seed bank

theguardian.com

144 pointsrobaato44 comments

There is also a more recent one in Syria :"How Seeds from War-Torn Syria Could Help Save American Wheat - May 14, 2018 https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-seeds-from-war-torn-syria... And another take on it here: How Syrians Saved an Ancient Seedbank From Civil War When civil war broke out in Syria, Ahmed Amri immediately thought about seeds. Specifically, 141,000 packets of them sitting in cold storage 19 miles south of Aleppo. https://www.wired.com/2015/04/syrians-saved-ancient-seedbank...

We might need to preserve seeds again due to climate change. Impressive to read about those who literally sacrificed their life during a siege for science and the future of humanity. Thanks for sharing.

There are multiple national and international initiatives that have been building seed banks for a long time, what do you mean with the again?

Also, there's talk of putting one on the moon.

Don't seed banks need regular refreshing?

Ideally yes but scientists have grown crops from single seeds that are thousands of years old so as long as the facilities passively maintain a low temperature, many of them will be viable for a very long time.

" as long as the facilities passively maintain a low temperature"

And remain dry.

Shouldn’t be a problem on the moon.

Seed banks are mostly self-refreshing. Seed viability decline during storage is measured and modelled for. A sample of seeds is taken out of storage and grown to breed a new batch of seeds after an amount of time based on the rate of decline of that sample.

So a batch that loses 20% viability every 5 years will be regrown to seed after a shorter amount of time than one that loses 2% viability every 5 years.

Source: was a seed germination and dormancy researcher at the Millennium Seed Bank

Yeah but even if the viability decline was quite slow on the moon, you would still have to refresh _eventually_, at least that's how I understand what you wrote.

Are we going to have robots on the moon doing the refreshing? That would be cool.

If you have everything on the moon needed to grow a large amount of plants couldn't you also support a human or two?

I'm the context of this comment chain, you're agreeing with the parent comment with a tone of disagreement. Yes, seed banks need periodic attention (whether you call that refreshing or self-refreshing or whatever), so you couldn't stick a bunch of seeds on the moon and just leave them there.

The proposed lunar seed bank is cryogenic, not room temperature.

What is the meaning of "self-refreshing" there, though? That sounds like a lot of work.

How does that work with apple trees and such?

My understanding is you could have a fantastic apple seed, grow it into a fantastic tree with fantastic fruit, but then the next generation grown from its seeds might be nearly inedible. And that all the delicious fruit we eat comes from grafted trees as a result of this.

Also, more generally, lots of trees are huge, so presumably you aren’t growing them in a cave or mine shaft. How is that handled?

There are relatively serious plans for permanent habitation on the moon. Transporting seeds occasionally hopefully won't require launching a lot of mass, but I don't know how many seeds they store.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault

After nuclear war I'm going to head there.

I love the fact that [0] is one of the videos you see when you look it up on Google Maps.

[0] https://maps.app.goo.gl/fWHX7Ba4B6H9iemf7

Virtual tour of the vault: https://virtualtourcompany.co.uk/GlobalSeedVault/index.html

The food should last quite a while!

It will be heavily guarded.

There is a wonderful plant bank here in Sydney, Australia. Lots of thick mud walls and other sophistications to outlast weather and similar incidents. https://www.botanicgardens.org.au/our-science/science-facili...

Pity the Ukrainian seed bank did not survive the Russians https://www.newscientist.com/article/2321008-priceless-sampl...

Elise Blackwell wrote "Hunger", a novel about these botanists, which I thought was well done.

There's a song about this: 'When The War Came' by The Decemberists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJHOiQ2uniU

Almost cried while reading this. I knew the story vaguely, but those details...

Cosmos with Neil Degrasse Tyson also did an episode on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaqVg6BXXtA

> The uploader has not made this video available in your country

We really need a civilization changing event to rethink some stuff.

<magnet:?xt=urn:btih:2650E9B1E36E713DD78BAFC638408A491854B839>

The same stopmotion animation studio that did the film Anomalisa did this episode!

What kind of cabbage is that? I mean look at their size.

um, a normal one? it looks exactly what I've seen on my grandmother's garden patch in my childhood. It's just that size is not very practical for supermarkets and a small family consumption, so current selection and harvesting methods go in the opposite direction.

Interesting. I've never seen such a huge cabbage.

see: Lysenkoism

Reply on news.ycombinator.com