Kew’s global seed banking network, the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership (MSBP), is the largest ex situ plant conservation programme in the world. Our focus is on plant life faced with the threat of extinction and plants of most use for the future.
Working with our network of partners across 100 countries and overseas territories, we have successfully banked approximately 15.6% of the world's wild plant species. Collections are preserved at the Wellcome Trust Millennium Building at Wakehurst and around the world in our partner seed banks. The collections and the vital associated knowledge enable innovation, adaptation and resilience in agriculture, horticulture, forestry and habitat restoration.
Through the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership, we aim to achieve the following:
1. Conservation of threatened, range restricted and useful plants
2. Expansion of the network of countries and partners working under common seed conservation standards to increase the quality and genetic diversity of collections.
3. Strengthen the seed collections of the UK flora, with a focus on multi-provenance collections of woody species and the threatened flora.
4. Research the different strategies needed to sample genetic diversity, and conserve seeds that cannot withstand desiccation and freezing.
5. Track progress of global seed conservation towards banking 25% of the world’s plant species; this equates to approximately 75,000 species.
The targets of the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership help to achieve Target 8 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, one of the Cross-Cutting Issues of the Convention on Biological Diversity. They also contribute towards Targets 2, 13 and 15 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
