By Shatakshi Gawade
As the rain clouds gathered above the parched land bereft of greenery, I imagined the earth stirring in anticipation. A week after the monsoon arrived, grass returned in full force over hills and open land. Where did it appear from?
Grass seeds were already present in the soil! Once annual grasses wilt at the end of their life, either in the summer heat or winter cold, they leave behind these little packets of life. These join seeds of trees, shrubs, and other plants. Soil is nature’s biggest seed bank, where seeds wait patiently for the next favourable season to spring to life, explains Ketaki Ghate, a senior botanist and ecologist, the co-founder of oikos for ecological services.
Seeds become dormant in tough times, such as drought, but they cannot live forever. To overcome this, humans have devised seed banks to extend their lives, to protect them from extinction amidst the climate crisis and global conflicts. The process involves drying, cleaning and freezing seeds, sometimes using liquid nitrogen, to slow down molecular movement. Each seed has a different, tailored protocol for preservation.
There are at least 1,700 seed banks in the world. For instance, the Millenium Seed Bank (MSB) in Sussex stores seeds in sealed glass jars and foil packets, in a vault that can withstand disasters such as fire and flooding. The Indian Seed Vault, the long-term seed storage facility in Leh, is led by the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources. It has tens of thousands of seed samples of various crops – wheat, pulses, and other local varieties – stored at sub-zero temperatures.
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Entrance to the global seed vault in Svalbard, Norway. Photo: Subiet/Cc-By-4.0
The Global Seed Vault from inside: vast, secure, and climate-controlled. Photo: Dag Endresen/Cc-By-3.0
When a seed is ‘frozen’ for storage, its growth is stopped, explains Ghate. “When seeds ‘grow’, they adapt to new conditions, and they learn and change with mutations. This must continue with climate change, since 500 years from now the climate may be different,” she says. “The concept of seed banks is thus a dilemma – if any plant goes extinct, we will have the stored seeds to fall back on, but we are also freezing the natural process of adaptation and reducing its chances of survival. So we believe that alongside frozen seed banks, we need to keep seeds in ‘live’ rotation,” shares Ghate.
Oikos, jointly with Pranjal Nursery, maintains a live seed bank in their nursery in Pune. They sow the seeds and nurture saplings that are planted at protected restoration sites or at their project sites. New seeds are collected mindfully from the mature plants in such wild areas for the next season. This is the most efficient way to ensure plant health, she explains: “We can use the seed’s memory, and the seed learns with every new generation.”
Farmers in India are not allowed to sell seeds without certifications, which gives corporations control over seeds that produce cash crops such as wheat. Most of the seeds sold by such companies don’t reproduce after the first or second cycle. Abhijit Patil, a photographer and farmer who lives in Ratnagiri, believes that since seeds are produced by nature, we all have shared ownership over them.
Enter Community Seed Banks (CSBs)! These are an effort to achieve resilience and ensure agency over land and life, says Patil. He has over 70 varieties of seeds of rice, vegetables and more in his seed bank, set up in collaboration with organisations such as BAIF and Shrushti Dnyan. In CSBs, the seeds are stored as naturally as possible, such as in the entire gourd, while others are stored in various sealed containers, including traditional mud vessels and plastic bottles.
These are stored with individual farmers, from cupboards to living rooms, making CSBs decentralised. Patil believes banks are not meant for living things. “In fact, we call them community seed libraries, and not seed banks,” he shares. Farmers borrow seeds and return them to the lender in the next season.
The best way to protect seeds is in the soil. Institutional seed banks are great to manage risks, but the concept of a seed bank works best with community involvement. A seed bank will be ‘alive’ only if the seeds go into the soil every year or two, and collects information to pass on to the next generation, making the seed – and us – resilient.
Shatakshi Gawade is a Senior Editor at Sanctuary Asia. She met endless wild creatures and compassionate people in her books in school, and now takes every opportunity to meet them in person through her work!
