I’ve wondered this for awhile. There are a lot of seeds – particularly in the tropics – that have no dormancy mechanism. If there’s no way for seed vaults to store those seeds and keep them alive, projects like the “doomsday vault” will always be woefully incomplete when it comes to tropical species. That seems like a huge concern, if it’s true.
Do they have a way to store tropical seeds? Or do they have some other way to safely store germplasm from species with seeds that cannot be dried out and can never be frozen?
If they can’t use cold storage, they keep them alive by keeping specimens alive in botanical gardens and they make sure they’re not “contaminated” by other species that can cross with them.
"These crops are stored, for the short term, in test-tube plantlets and in field collections that are inherently high risk of neglect, disease, and natural disasters. "
Looks like some people are also looking at cryopreservation so the genetic material will be preserved.
Ah so that’s the point of botanical gardens. Contaminated? So they basically store plants like it’s a museum? but do they also allow breeders to access pollen, cuttings, seeds, etc? or is there goal to preserve species form extinction.
Are Dates tropical species? Cuz a 2000 year old date seed germinated, not sure if there are other tropical species that can do something similar. I’ve heard stories of old Squash fruits from 500+ year old ancient ruins that still managed to germinate. Not sure how true that is, or if it was an over exaggeration but it does make me curious.
Interesting, another question to ask if it’s easier to freeze pollen? It’s not like the freezing tropical pollen makes them not viable right?
There are definitely some tropical species that have seeds that can handle being dried. Probably anything that’s native to a dry area. I believe date palms are highly drought tolerant, so they may have come from a dry area. Carob is a desert tree, and its seeds can clearly go dormant, given that I’ve gotten a high germination rate from carob seeds stored dry at room temperature for years.
Hard to say about storing pollen. I’ve been told banana pollen only has a lifespan of a few days, and freezing it doesn’t increase that. I don’t know if this is true for other tropical species.
Yea, makes a lot of sense. I wonder if some tropical species can be bred to survive their seeds being dry? I think this only applies to some tropical trees & some perennials as the Tropical Annuals must’ve figured out a way to dry their seeds otherwise they wouldn’t have survived.
Squash, Melons, Tomatoes, Potatoes, Pepino Melon, Peppers, Jaltomata, Nasturtium, Oca Oxalis, Piegon Peas, Quickweed/Galinsoga are all technically tropical (Or Sub-Tropical) crops.
, What a bummer, darn! Wait so if freezing doesn’t increase pollen lifespan, does that mean it doesn’t looses viability due to frost but only to time?
I know Dragonfruit pollen freezes & stores well, I’ve learned how to freeze pollen for storage thanks to Drangon Fruit Breeders on Youtube.
I tend to question most of the information about seed and pollen viability. I have grown dried lemon, orange and grapefruit seeds, some of them years old. I think that any plant with seeds that need to be sown very fresh would go extinct in a single dry year.
They must have some way of going dormant or they would not survive any level of climate variability.
Interesting point! Maybe most species have a bit of that in their ancient genetics, but it’s been mostly selected out due to it being unnecessary in the climate (and actually a disadvantage most of the time – in a year-round wet, tropical climate, seeds with no dormancy have a huge head start advantage over seeds with it).
If it’s possible to find it in the gene pool, even rarely, then it’s possible to select for that, which would probably help a great deal in adapting tropical species to more temperate climates.
There’s a beautiful tradition of Native seed savers and living seed banks, where plants are grown out regularly in order to preserve seed freshness, avoid the need for dormancy, and also allow seeds to consistently acclimatize to our changing environments. Seed vaults are cute and all, but if none of those seeds can germinate in a world 10 degrees hotter, they might all be useless at the end of the day.
That’s an excellent tradition! I think both seed banks and living seed banks are very important, and having lots of both is ideal. We want archives of old seeds in case valuable traits accidentally get lost over time (which can easily happen). We want new seeds because they adapt to the changing climate with each generation.
INCREDIBLE! So I was lied too about fully dried citrus seeds not being viable? That makes a lot of sense but some rain forrest don’t experience dry years right?
I’m sure this can be bred for!
Russian Plant Breed Ivan Michurin did exactly that! Bring many plants to survive colder temperatures! He did Mentor Grafting, Mentor Pollination, Crossing distant species, nearly everysingle trick in the book & outside the book . Just now science it catching up.
He discovered that grafting can change the DNA of the scion, thus incorporate genes without crossing via pollination. However he stressed the importance that Young plastid seedlings are more accepting of DNA transfer from grafts.
He emphasized that young hybrid seedlings are more plastid & the wide the cross, the more plastid the seedling is.
anyways, Some people were playing around with breeding cold hardy dragonfruit. It’s something I’d love to do! Perhaps Pear cactus could graft dragonfruit & mentor a young dragonfruit seedling?
This is excellent! Tho it’s also important to have doomsday vault too if you can’t garden for multiple years. Another mind breaking concept is there already exists THOUSANDS of seeds inside the soil known as the soil seedbank. If you till the soil, you bring up ancient seeds that never saw the day of light until your digging brought them up. Techically the soil is a seedbank too! Amaranth & Lambsquater seeds store in that soil seedbank well! Strawberry spinach was discovered this way too, in a place where it was thought to never grow.
I can Bet, we can find extinct species seeds in the soil seedbank, right beneath our feet!
Landrace gardening is all about climatizing seeds to climate conditons, however I think it’s also smart to save a lil seeds to store for long term & to bring back the old genetics into current landrace. Being able to store a lil seeds for 30 years is smart!
Quick question, can you freezedry seeds & expect them to germinate?
If I recall correctly, lofthouse mixes a lil of his old seeds with his new seeds, to make sure some important old traits aren’t forgotten. Like 10 years ago it was wetter & 10 year later became dryer then 10 years later it become wet again. Within those 10 years the plants may have forgotten wet conditions but your old seed may have remembered & things like that (Altho I think seeds are more adaptive than we think).
You can absolutely freeze dry seeds and expect them to germinate. I keep an archive of some of all my best seeds from my garden from every year in the freezer. I got the idea from Carol Deppe, who strongly recommended doing that in her books. I figure it’s similar in principle to a regular computer backup – you want that archive, in case you lose valuable traits or have unusual weather one year in a way that shifts the population in a way you find nonoptimal.
Yeah, I remember Joseph Lofthouse saying he does that, too. I think it’s a great idea!
P.S. I’m not sure if you can store dried tropical seeds and expect them to germinate. That seems a lot more iffy, since the plants die below freezing temperatures under normal conditions. But maybe, if they can survive being dried, they can also survive being frozen? Tropical seeds that don’t mind being dry (such as dragonfruit) can be frozen and still germinate afterwards.
I think we severely underestimate the adaptability of plants and seeds. There have been times in our climate history when global temperatures were as much as 20 degrees from our current norm–that means in some periods the tropics would have seen consistent ice and snow, while in other times there would have been no snow at all. And yet the temperate and tropical plants recovered.
There have been times when because of vulcanism or solar cycles there was very little sun for years, all across the globe. But plants survived.
There is evidence of tropical rainforests at the north pole, and the remnants of aluvial glaciers in the tropics. Our world is in constant upheaval, and the plants are designed for this. They’ve seen it all before.
I’m sure there are particular species that are easily killed off (for instance, monkfruit seems to be an absolute diva about growing conditions), but I think you’re absolutely right about the plant kingdom as a whole: a lot of resilience there. I really hope the species we consider the yummiest are among the ones that survive best.
@JinTX I think you’re probably overall right that it’s easier to adapt to warmer climates than colder ones, but that’s “with all else being equal.” I suspect it’s much harder to adapt to drier climates than either, and a lot of places are becoming hotter and drier.
Others are becoming hotter and wetter . . . and in those places, the plant life will probably thrive.
Yes water is the other major factor, a super dry climate is going to be difficult.
The upside is that when looking at the long term data it is the deserts that get wetter when the climate warms. So it opens up two different regions (the frozen and the dry/desert) which were previously not available for crop production.
The issue is the changes along the way. Our current “conventional” systems of agriculture do not adapt well, or at least not quickly, to any change. And as a society we aren’t very good at predicting the future.
, What a bummer, darn! Wait so if freezing doesn’t increase pollen lifespan, does that mean it doesn’t looses viability due to frost but only to time?
. Just now science it catching up.