Australian Seed Bank Partnership

How hard can it be to collect a few tree seeds? Quite tricky in some parts of Australia. We have a huge landscape, so getting to some of our native trees can take days of travelling. We also need to time our trips carefully as some species only fruit once every seven years! If you would like to come with us don’t forget to pack your climbing gear, we might have to scale a 40-metre tree to reach the fruit. And once we make it to the top, we will still need to check that a predator hasn’t nibbled its way through the seed we're there to collect-there’s no point banking seeds that will never grow. Don’t worry, some trees produce fruit we can reach from the ground, so you won’t spend all day up a tree. Why not come along as we journey deep into the Australian bush to collect seeds from nine of Australia’s threatened tree species. We might even share some photos of other interesting trees we find along the way.

Before we head off, let’s talk a little about why we collect tree seeds.

Plants and other flora form the basis of all life on Earth, and trees are an important life form. Trees provide many food, fibre and cultural uses for humanity as well as many critical ecosystem services. Despite this, trees are under threat from every direction. Climate change, habitat loss, pests and disease threaten the 60,000 tree species on our planet. Luckily there is work being done to better understand these threats with the conservation status of all known trees being reviewed under the Global Tree Assessment (GTA), a project led by Botanic Gardens Conservation International. The GTA includes each and every one of Australia's endemic tree species and will help inform conservation action for trees everywhere - https://www.globaltreeassessment.org/

Many of Australia’s tree species are endemic, meaning they occur nowhere else in the world. Yet almost a quarter of these are threatened with extinction. One way to conserve our trees and avoid extinction is to store tree seeds in ex situ conservation seed banks. This starts with careful planning. When the time is right, seeds are collected from trees in the wild, and are then dried and frozen for long term storage. This method conserves species ex situ (off site from native habitats), providing a genetically diverse back up for wild populations. There are however some species that need substantially more research before we fully understand how best to conserve them in seed banks. Often these are rainforest species whose seeds don't respond well to traditional drying and freezing methods.

In Australia there are many seed banks collecting and storing seeds for conservation. The major seed banks in each state and territory work together, along with other flora conservation organisations, as part of the Australian Seed Bank Partnership. As a Partnership we collect and store seeds, deliver critical research and support the restoration of Australia's ecosystems by utilising our collections and sharing our knowledge.

From 2014-2019 the Australian Seed Bank Partnership contributed to global efforts to conserve 3,000 of the world’s rarest trees and shrubs as part of the Global Trees Seed Bank Project. Partners in each state and territory have been collecting tree seeds from every corner of Australia, including our external island territories. We have collated stories from the nine Australian conservation seed banks that were involved in the Global Tree Seed Bank Project. We are sharing these stories in the hope our experiences can inspire you to learn more about the Australian flora. The theme for these stories is ‘Going bush – collecting Australian seed’. Here you can read about the challenges of collecting seed in Australia and see how unique our flora is. All the species described are rare or threatened so collecting their seed was an essential step in their ongoing conservation.

These efforts were supported by the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership (MSBP) who instigated the Global Tree Seed Bank Project with funding from the Garfield Weston Foundation. As part of this project seeds were collected from endangered, endemic and economically significant target species globally. These seeds are now banked in MSBP-affiliated seed banks around the world, including Australia, with duplicate collections sent to the Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst Place in the United Kingdom as an added insurance against species loss.

The Australian Seed Bank Partnership continues to collect seeds given every opportunity. Our aim is to increase the genetic diversity of our collections, representing the entire Australian flora in seed banks throughout Australia. We rely on funding from governments, grants and philanthropic donations to fund our critical ex situ seed conservation and research. We also couldn’t do what we do without our wonderful volunteers and students that help us collect, clean, germinate, store, catalogue and write about our precious native seeds.