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Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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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.
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ah yes, the Soviet Union that turned a country that was still feudal in the 20th century into a country that sent the first human to space 50 years later for sure was very against science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko#Repression_of_b...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine#Agricultu...
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/trofim-l...
Note that Nikolai Vavilov, a scientist that preserved the seedbank cited in the Guardian article, was actually purged due to Lysenko's crusade against genetics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov
> Vavilov's work was criticized by Trofim Lysenko, whose anti-Mendelian concepts of plant biology had won favor with Joseph Stalin. As a result, Vavilov was arrested and subsequently sentenced to death in July 1941. Although his sentence was commuted to twenty years' imprisonment, he died in prison in 1943. In 1955, his death sentence was retroactively pardoned under Nikita Khrushchev. By the late 1950s, his reputation was publicly rehabilitated, and he began to be hailed as a hero of Soviet science.[4]
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ah yes, the Soviet Union that turned a country that was still feudal in the 20th century into a country that sent the first human to space 50 years later for sure was very against science.
I actually overall agree with your point, but to be fair the off topic remark probably was targeted at this bit of pseudoscience that unfortunately dominated Soviet politics for decades, and its influence in Soviet and Chinese agricultural policy ultimately contributed to the death of millions of people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko#Repression_of_b... https://en…
Cosmos with Neil Degrasse Tyson also did an episode on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaqVg6BXXtA
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Also, there's talk of putting one on the moon.
Don't seed banks need regular refreshing?
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
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't seed banks need regular refreshing?
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: w…
Are we going to have robots on the moon doing the refreshing? That would be cool.