October 21, 2025 • 41 mins
The Millennium Seed Bank started life as a modest chest freezer housed in an English chapel. It’s now a multi-layered vault housing over 2.5 billion wild seeds, with partnerships all over the world. A living insurance policy for our world’s plants.
In this first episode of Unearthed: The need for seeds, Wakehurst ambassador Cate Blanchett dives into the rich history of Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank with Kew’s Senior Research Leader in Seed Conservation, Dr Elinor Breman and founding father Roger Smith.
She also discovers the extraordinary variety of seeds stored and why — including relatives of staple crops like carrots and potatoes — to safeguard global food systems, explained by Dr Chris Cockel, UK Conservation Projects Coordinator at the Millennium Seed Bank.
And we hear from Dan Duval, Senior Seed Collections Officer from the South Australian Seed Conservation Centre, who shares testimony for the vital role banked seeds already play in regenerating habitats.
You can support the vital work of the Millennium Seed Bank by donating here: www.kew.org/seeds
Instagram: @kewgardens
Facebook: @kewgardens
YouTube: @kewgardens
Unearthed - The need for seeds is a Fresh Air production for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Series Producer: Hannah Fisher, Executive Producer: Annie Day, Director of Content: Michaela Hallam. Sound Design by Dan King.
With special thanks to everyone at Wakehurst and the Millennium Seed bank who helped with the production behind the scenes.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Cate Blanchett (00:06):
The sound of the leaves underfoot really transported me back home
to Australia the very first time I stumbled upon Wakehurst,
and I found myself in the middle of England in a
glade of eucalypts and Wollemi pines. And the Wollemi for me
has a particular significance because they're a fossil, really, or
(00:30):
a dinosaur tree that were thought to be extinct. And
they were discovered in the Blue Mountains in the mid-
90s. And I got married in the late 90s in the Blue
Mountains. And so the sound of the Wollemis and their
fragrance and the fact that they've been preserved here in
a place like Wakehurst. When I stumbled upon them the
first time I came here, I stood here and I
(00:53):
wept. And I wept because they could be lost, but
they're being protected here at Wakehurst. But also as you
wander through this incredibly unique and magical and precious glade,
it's connected to so many other species from so many
other parts of the world. And you realize that every
tree, every plant, every flower, every seed, whilst it's specific
(01:17):
to a territory, it's all interconnected. And it reminds you
just how precious those songlines are, and they happen here
at Wakehurst. It's a magical, magical place. Wakehurst is Kew's wild and beautiful
botanic garden set deep in the heart of the Sussex
(01:40):
countryside, a sanctuary for nature. You can lose yourself here
as I did in the astonishing diversity of trees, plants,
and grasses covering every inch of its sweeping grounds. But
Wakehurst is so much more than a garden and a
lovely day out. Beyond its beauty lies a living laboratory
(02:02):
where groundbreaking research is shaping the very future of biodiversity.
At the heart of Wakehurst is the Millennium Seed Bank.
Its vaults, hidden underneath the hollows of these grounds, house
almost 2. 5 billion seeds, 40,000 rare, important, and threatened
(02:24):
species from almost every country and territory across the globe.
And they're safely stored, ex situ, protected outside their natural
habitat. It's a modern Noah's Ark, and it's the largest
repository of wild seeds on earth and the most biodiverse
place on our planet. I'm Cate Blanchett, and that experience
(02:46):
that I had in the Wollemi pines was the catalyst
that led me on a journey to becoming Kew's ambassador
for Wakehurst and a champion of the Millennium Seed Bank.
And on this journey, I've learned of the scope of
the work that Wakehurst is doing to preserve the future
of our planet because there's no way around it. We
have to face the fact that our planet is in
(03:08):
crisis. Climate change, deforestation, the relentless unsustainable use of our
natural resources, species disappearing at a pace unprecedented in human
history. Like most people, some days I despair, but the
work being done at Wakehurst gives me hope. The Millennium
(03:32):
Seed Bank holds within its vaults tools to restore habitats,
to bring species back from the brink, to discover how little-
known plants might become our future foods, our medicines, our
materials. In this series we'll go behind the scenes of
this extraordinary partnership to understand its humble roots, the work
(03:54):
it's doing now, and the impact it could have on
our future. And it's a true partnership, an international collaboration
between visionary scientists and devoted collectors, working together on an
insurance policy for our planet. Life begins with seeds, and
so does our best chance to save it. Welcome to
(04:17):
Unearthed
year marks the 25th anniversary of the Millennium Seed Bank,
or the MSB. It's now a world- leading initiative at
(04:38):
the cutting edge of science, but it wasn't quite so cutting-
edge in the beginning. Every great story starts somewhere, and
ours begins over a quarter of a century ago. In
this chapter, we'll meet the visionary people who saw the
future coming.
Roger Smith (04:56):
We sneaked onto the site and looked in the hole,
and that is the point at which I said to Simon, "
What have we started?" And from there on, there is
only one way, which is out and up.
Cate Blanchett (05:11):
And we'll understand how that vision is already bearing fruit.
Dan Duval (05:15):
100s of plants have been introduced working with the community,
but this never would've happened if we didn't bank this in
2006 with MSB.
Cate Blanchett (05:22):
And we'll hear from those continuing to build on the
legacy who are just as passionate about it as the
Seed Bank's founders.
Dr. Chris Cockel (05:30):
Those wild relative seeds are now at these international crop-
breeding gene banks with the aim of making our domesticated
crops more able to withstand the pressures of climate change
and various pests and diseases that they might be faced
with in the future.
Cate Blanchett (05:43):
But let's begin in a place that represents both the
past and the present of this story. While I'm standing
in an American prairie, it's full of native plants, and
I can see rattlesnake master, which is a very tall, sort
of beautiful silvery thistle, and this foxglove, and there's beardtongue, and there's black-
(06:07):
eyed Susans, which I absolutely love. And I mean some
of these grasses and plants are as tall as my
shoulders. It's an American prairie, but I'm not in America.
I am in the heart of Sussex in Wakehurst. And
this landscape is only possible really because of the amazing
work that the Millennium Seed Bank is doing, and more
(06:29):
incongruous perhaps than an American prairie in East Sussex is
the juxtaposition of this prairie with a quintessential English mansion
just ahead. I'm here with Dr. Eleanor Brehman, who's the
senior research leader in seed conservation.
Dr Eleanor Brehman (06:42):
Hi, welcome to Wakehurst.
Cate Blanchett (06:43):
Thank you. I mean, just in the distance, there is
a grade one Elizabethan mansion and that was built around 1570.
Dr Eleanor Brehman (06:49):
1500s.
Cate Blanchett (06:51):
Yeah.
Dr Eleanor Brehman (06:51):
Yeah.
Cate Blanchett (06:51):
And it's old stone. It's almost like something out of
a storybook. So it's very old, but it feels really
at odds with this experimental landscape that we are standing
in. This wild landscape here at Wakehurst. Why did you
want to meet me here?
Dr Eleanor Brehman (07:05):
Well, because this is where seed banking started at Wakehurst.
So the Seed Physiology department moved down from Kew in the
70s. We were based in the mansion originally and actually
had a big walk- in freezer, like one of those
butcher's freezers in the chapel. That was the original seed bank.
Cate Blanchett (07:24):
The seed bank was in the chapel?
Dr Eleanor Brehman (07:26):
And the physiology team were working up in Lady Price's
bedroom, and they were doing some work on one of
the mahogany desks once, and when she came around, and
she was really not very happy that science was being
undertaken on this heirloom of the family. So I think
they got some lab benches in after that.
Cate Blanchett (07:44):
So given that you were able to store seeds in
a butcher's freezer in the mansion, that's not very high-
tech. I mean, obviously the modern building that houses the
seed bank now, for the past 25 years, it's got
a lot more sophisticated freezers than, say, there or I
would have at home. What are the facilities like there?
(08:04):
How would you describe them?
Dr Eleanor Brehman (08:06):
Yeah, I think when we were in the mansion, it
was more in an experimental phase and we were trying
to understand the seed biology that enables seeds to be
dried and then stored at sub- zero temperatures to extend
their lifespan. And we really wanted to know if that
was going to work for wild plant species. Because it
had already been done for agriculture, but they've quite uniform
seeds. So it was that experimental stage, but then we'd
(08:29):
proved the concept and in the 90s collected the UK
flora, so that we could show that it really worked
before going international. And the point of our new facilities,
well now 25 years old, was the scale. We needed
to scale up. So the technology still remained relatively simple.
We're drying, and we're putting in an airtight container and
we're putting in a freezer. So yes, the freezers are
(08:50):
bigger, they've got roller shelving so we can maximize the
space usage, but at the end of the day, it's
just a - 20 freezer, but it's conserving all this biodiversity
from around the world.
Cate Blanchett (09:01):
I mean, people obviously, if they're interested in building a
garden, they buy seeds at their local gardening store. But
why do you think it's so important at this juncture
in human history that we gather and preserve seeds?
Dr Eleanor Brehman (09:16):
45% of all wild plants are faced with extinction. So
the race is on, really, to conserve seeds from those
species before it's too late and we've lost them forever.
Because you don't know what you're losing until it's gone.
Nobody's worked on these; we don't know whether that's the
next medicine, whether it could improve our sustainable agriculture, what
(09:39):
properties it has that we might find useful and might
provide ecosystem services that we're depending on and we don't
even realize.
Cate Blanchett (09:47):
And the way those plants and species have an interdependent culture.
Dr Eleanor Brehman (09:51):
Yeah. And interact with each other to form that ecosystem.
Cate Blanchett (09:54):
So when you say that 45% of plant species are
facing extinction, that isn't just reflective of the UK, is it?
Dr Eleanor Brehman (10:02):
No.
Cate Blanchett (10:02):
I mean, it's a global figure, right?
Dr Eleanor Brehman (10:03):
Yeah. That's plants across the world. So in all environments,
from pole to pole, from sea level to the tops
of mountains, plants are feeling the pressure of human land
use change, overexploitation, invasive species, pollution, and then climate change
as well. So it's not a very friendly environment for
(10:23):
a lot of our plants anymore.
Cate Blanchett (10:25):
I don't know whether it's that I've specifically noticed that
there's fewer plants around, but I have noticed, particularly in
summer, when you go for a long drive, there are
not as many bugs-
Dr Eleanor Brehman (10:35):
No.
Cate Blanchett (10:35):
- On the windshield.
Dr Eleanor Brehman (10:36):
No.
Cate Blanchett (10:36):
There's fewer butterflies, fewer bees when you're out in nature,
not here in the American prairie, of course, but is
that a direct effect of that 45% loss?
Dr Eleanor Brehman (10:45):
Yeah, I mean, we've seen a dramatic decline in natural
habitats all around the world. I mean, the human population
is expanding, people need places to live, we need to
grow food to eat. So those things have to happen,
but we need to start doing those things in a
smarter way and realizing that we have to do those
things in harmony with nature rather than seeing nature as
(11:06):
a never- ending resource that will just keep being there
or keep bouncing back. We actually need to be supporting
nature. And one of the ways we're doing that is
through seed banking so that we're buying time for these
species, which are feeling a load of pressures in their
natural environments. And we have had partners who go out
on a collecting trip, and something that they rescued earlier
(11:29):
in the year, they go back, and it's gone. They
can't make that collection, and that happens more and more
frequently, unfortunately. We do have wonderful moments as well where
they discover plants that have never been described by science.
So it can work both ways, and I think that's
the beauty of seed banking and this collaborative work around
(11:50):
the world is, its discovery. There's always something new to
learn, and these experts are just giving all of their
time and their knowledge and their passion to making sure that
we have the best possible outcomes for plants going forward
as we can.
Cate Blanchett (12:06):
The Millennium Seed Bank is the largest ex situ wild
plant conservation program in the world. When you say " wild
seeds," what do you actually mean?
Dr Eleanor Brehman (12:16):
Yeah, so it means that they're seeds that have been
collected from their natural habitat, so where they would normally
grow. So this is why we work with partners all
around the world to help them conserve their native floras.
And that's very different to going to an agricultural setting
and taking cultivated material, which are the seeds that you'd
buy in the packets in the garden shop. And it also
(12:39):
means that you are conserving a huge amount of diversity
because these plants in their natural habitats are adapting to
thrive and survive in these changing conditions. And so by
capturing seeds from populations across that species' natural range, you
can capture all of this diversity. And the amazing thing
about seed banking is that you can store all of that in a
(13:00):
really small space, and for a relatively low cost. I
mean, it's a relatively low- tech, simple solution to a
really big problem.
Cate Blanchett (13:08):
How much has the mission changed in that 25 years?
It was so state-of- the- art and cutting- edge, but
also the future probably seemed much further away than it
does here and now.
Dr Eleanor Brehman (13:19):
I mean, when it first opened, there was more of
an acquisition phase. We were just trying to get plants
to be prevented from extinction, get the seeds into the
bank, and know they were safe. But then as we
got more and more species in, that allowed us to
understand more and more plants and their ecology, and actually this
information that we get through germinating the seed and the
data that we're amassing from the field when we collect
(13:42):
the seeds and all of the processing is really, really important
for restoration. And we are then using these seeds. You know it is a bank;
you make deposits and withdrawals, right? So the seeds are
coming back out of the bank. It's not their end
resting place. And the real focus is on supporting active
ecological restoration programs in spaces where the environment is stable
(14:05):
enough to be putting these rare and threatened plants back
into the landscape and that they will still be there
in 10, 20 years' time.
Cate Blanchett (14:12):
The times where I've been in the seed bank, there's
invariably been students and researchers from all around the world.
Is it important for them to come here?
Dr Eleanor Brehman (14:19):
We have really close relationships with our partners, and actually
Australia's a really good case in point because we've been
working with them since 2000. During that time we've helped
develop a wild plant seed bank in every state and
territory in Australia, and they've now formed their own Australian
seed bank partnership. So that's kind of the journey that
we want to go on with all of our partners.
We provide training, we provide resources. Initially we might provide
(14:42):
some funding to get them out to the field and
make those initial collections and help them start, but the
idea is for them all to stand on their own and be
organizations who can manage their own floras.
Cate Blanchett (14:55):
We'll come back to Australia later, but we're having this
conversation, as I mentioned earlier, in the middle of an
American prairie landscape in the middle of Sussex. It's a
landscape that's made up of seeds that are collected from
the USA and brought back here to Wakehurst.
Dr Eleanor Brehman (15:11):
The horticultural team went out to the states and made
collections from existing prairies over there so that we had
that authentic seed mix to put into the prairie land
here. But we've also got those rare, threatened, endangered species
which we collected. We've got in the seed bank, grew
on, and then have mixed in to this kind of
mosaic of planting here. So that visitors could engage with
(15:34):
that story and understand that plants in all corners of
the world are under threat, but they're beautiful and create
these amazing landscapes that we want to be in and
just make us feel happier. And then it has the
links to the seed bank as well, and I love
that about Wakehurst is that there's so much collaboration between
the seed bank and what's going on in the landscape.
(15:56):
It's more than 50% of the plants in the Wakehurst landscape
have been grown from seed that have been collected from
all around the world.
Cate Blanchett (16:06):
Now a seed holds so much potential. But there are
also many different types of seeds, and as we've heard,
what sets the Millennium Seed Bank apart is the fact
that every single seed banked here is wild.
Dr. Chris Cockel (16:19):
I guess the unique selling point of the Millennium Seed
Bank is that we're a wild species seed bank. So
in general, we don't bank domesticated crop seeds. Our role
is to collect the wild and then make them available.
So that was what the project was all about, was
making those seeds available for breeders.
Cate Blanchett (16:34):
This is Dr. Chris Cockel. He's now the UK's conservation
projects coordinator at MSB. But before that, he headed up
a project that focused on collecting the wild relatives of
crops that you and I would think of as food.
Now for many of those species, there's very little family
resemblance that remains.
Dr. Chris Cockel (16:55):
So what we have here are some wild banana seeds.
They're quite large, half a centimeter across perhaps, and the
banana those came from were very small. So there's a
misconception, I guess, that bananas come from the Caribbean. They
were collected in Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand. So what we have
here is a wild banana plant from Vietnam, and this
(17:19):
was grown from seed, from 2016, and the seeds came
from one of our partners for the Adapting Agriculture to
Climate Change project. The main difference you'll see between a
wild banana plant and a cultivated banana plant is the
fruit actually. Part of the domestication process, including with bananas,
is that humans have over millennia created fruit and vegetables
(17:43):
that are palatable, that are edible, that are high- yielding.
So in the case of the wild banana plant, the
fruit is much smaller and it's full of seeds, whereas
the domesticated Cavendish banana, the ones from the supermarket, it
doesn't have seeds in it because they're all generated from clones.
And what you see in the center of the Cavendish
banana is just the remnant of seeds, and also there's
(18:04):
a lot of flesh that you can eat, whereas in
the wild banana, there's virtually nothing that you would think
you would want to eat in there. These plants are
not genetically modified. They are the product of, as I
say, millennia of traditional breeding methods where farmers have taken
different varieties and crossed them with one another to bring
out the traits that we want in terms of yield
(18:26):
and size, taste. There's something called the genetic bottleneck, where
you've come from a very broad genetic base to a
very narrow genetic base, and this makes the domesticated crops
vulnerable to pests and diseases and to changes in climate.
Cate Blanchett (18:42):
It's taken human ingenuity to evolve edible fruits and vegetables
as we know and consume them today, but the same
processes that increase their attractiveness to us as food also
makes them vulnerable to an increasingly threatening future. However, there
are potential solutions to that problem within the wider family tree.
Dr. Chris Cockel (19:04):
There are also still the wild relatives that are out
in the wild, and they contain a lot of adaptive
traits that have been lost in the domesticated crops. So that's
what we're trying to capture when we're collecting the seeds
of these wild species. There's a scale between wild and
domesticated, so we're now at the fully domesticated. There are
intermediate stages as well, semi- domesticated, and these are called
(19:25):
heritage varieties. And then there's the truly wild, and the
further away from the domesticated you get, the more difficult
it is to breed those wild ones with the domesticated
because they're almost different species. In some cases they are
different species.
Cate Blanchett (19:38):
These are called crop wild relatives, and they're really important.
Dr. Chris Cockel (19:42):
The important thing about the crop wild relatives is that
we can take those adaptive traits, and through traditional breeding
methods, we can breed back into the domesticated crops some
of those important traits that have been lost. And by reintroducing
some of those lost wild traits, you can make our
domesticated crops more capable to withstand the different pressures they're
going to face in the future.
Cate Blanchett (20:03):
So much of the work of the partnership projects of
the Millennium Seed Bank are future facing and will focus
specifically on the work going on in order to future-
proof in episode three. But for now, let's step back
in time, not as far back as the dawn of
agriculture before crops were ever domesticated, but to the early
(20:24):
1970s, when it was agricultural industry itself that inspired an idea.
Roger Smith (20:33):
Looking back, what we were actually doing was seeing how
much of the technology that they used in crops to
conserve seeds could be successfully applied to undomesticated, wild plants.
And it was a case of then beg, stealing, borrowing
(20:54):
ideas to solve the problems that we had of seed storage.
Cate Blanchett (21:00):
This is Roger Smith; he's one of the founding fathers
of the Millennium Seed Bank. And now decades later, he's
striding over to meet us in a brightly colored stripy
jumper, with a mysterious smile.
Roger Smith (21:13):
I came in 1974 as the seed collector, and then
I became the head of the seed bank project in 2000.
Cate Blanchett (21:25):
We talked to him back outside the old stone mansion
where it all began.
Roger Smith (21:30):
At Kew, they had a refrigerated collection of seeds, which
they used to share with other botanic gardens, and it was
big enough when it did come down here to go
into the boot of a Ford Cortina; that's how it
was transported down. And it went into the chapel. So
(21:54):
if you like, the chapel changed from saving souls to
saving seeds.
Cate Blanchett (21:59):
But the job of saving seeds was new and it
was not straightforward.
Roger Smith (22:04):
So we were covering everything from " Can you actually collect
these seeds," and then insufficient number. Then we had to learn how
to clean seeds so that you ended up with just
seeds and not seeds and bits of rubbish because you're
trying to get the smallest volume that you can of
(22:27):
viable seeds. The other thing you can't do is damage
the seeds. And we had a few experiments in there
where we did end up with flour, rather than seeds.
It was learning just like that as you went along;
not one question off, move on to the next. At
the same time we learned keeping them in the building,
(22:48):
in the open, they would die or begin to die
in a couple of years. So you had to find out
how to keep them dry and viable. And then when
you've got the seeds, you've then got to learn how
to germinate them to turn them back into plants because
if you can't turn them back into plants, then what
(23:10):
was the point? And so it goes on, and never-
ending sort of beg, steal, or borrow any idea you
could find that appeared to solve the problem you'd just
bumped into. We had 20 years of learning how to
become an overnight sensation.
Cate Blanchett (23:29):
And 20 years of learning came with its own particular challenges.
Roger Smith (23:34):
We started to accumulate more research evidence at the same
time that the conditions that we were putting them into
were the best for the seeds, with a compromise for
the economics of running it and the health and safety,
because at one point we had a room that was
not at - 20; it was at - 40. And the minute you'd say
(23:59):
minus 40, you have to go through a whole set
of medical examinations to make sure you are not going
to have a heart attack when you walk in or
walk out. It was a little bit of a Boy
Scouts adventure, I suppose, if you like, in that respect.
It was not, " Here you are, sit there, this is what
(24:20):
you do." It was a case of " This is what
we want to do. How do you think we do
it?" It was adventurous.
Cate Blanchett (24:28):
There's a strong thread, I think, that you'll hear throughout
this series, and that's the passion and determination of like-
minded people from across the globe not taking no for
an answer. People who were pushing the existing boundaries of
science as they play their part in securing the future
of our planet. And that passion was there from the
(24:50):
beginning. For the people at the heart of the MSB, it's
not a job; it's a true vocation.
Roger Smith (24:57):
I think I had thought I was joining a job.
Where it became an obsession. And yes, I suppose more
and more people in the world of biology and botany
who were concerned about species loss but didn't know what
to do about it. For us, the mentality was, " Well,
(25:20):
we've got to start somewhere, and we'll find out as
we go along." Because that's what humans have always done.
And so that when the Millennium Commission comes along and
offers large sums of money for something that is not
business as usual but is something of a grander scale,
(25:41):
they wanted it to... I reread the establishing paperwork; they
wanted the projects to last for the next 30 generations,
which is another millennium. We'll happily... By that time we
had seen research that showed that some seeds could last
for even longer than that. So we could meet their
(26:04):
sort of ambition. And we had enough partners who'd visited,
learned around the world that we could say, and " We'll
work on a global scale, and we'll do 10%," which is the
rate at which species are reported to be becoming threatened with
extinction. Having got that, I moved my job to go
(26:26):
and meet partners and persuade them, would they join in.
Made relatively easy by that time by the Convention on
Biological Diversity, which had been, I think, in 1993, and
there is my favorite bit in the preamble, which says
(26:50):
that lack of full scientific certainty should not be a
reason for not acting. So they all signed up and
stood up, and then the rest, as they say, is history.
Cate Blanchett (27:06):
If they hadn't signed up and stood up, that history
would look very different today, and so would our future.
I was really, really struck by Roger recounting the early
days of the Millennium Seed Bank. I mean, ultimately it
was a group of people who strongly believed in action,
not just talking about it, but action to preserve our
(27:26):
planet. They might've been thinking about seeds, but they were
thinking big. And the Millennium Seed Bank still thinks big
today. Chris Cockel worked with partners in 25 countries around
the world to coordinate seed collecting efforts for the Crop
Wild Relatives project.
Dr. Chris Cockel (27:45):
So our partners went out and collected the seeds of the
wild relatives. They sent two- thirds of the collections to
us, and they retained one- third of the collection in their
home countries. And then further down the line, our role
was to send a portion of those seeds to crop
breeders. So from the very start of the project we
had an end use for these seeds. There were two years spent
(28:07):
at the very beginning of the project, from 2011 to 2013, when
a gap analysis was conducted. And this basically looked at
what was already stored in seed banks around the world
and also decided which were the priority crops. And it
turned out that almost 30% of those wild relatives were
not represented in seed banks at all, and up to
95% of them were not geographically represented. So you are
(28:30):
missing a lot of the genetic diversity that you get
from collecting species from across its geographic range. So for
instance, one of the very basic crop wild relatives we
were collecting was the relative of the carrot. So whereas
the domesticated carrot that you would buy in the supermarket is a
nice, long orange vegetable, the wild relative is just a
gnarly root that you probably wouldn't want to eat. It's
(28:51):
almost like a weed. And that was what was missing
in existing collections. And so that material wasn't available for
breeders to use. The project focused on 29 important crops;
some crops will have more wild relatives than others, like
bananas, only have a few, but aubergine have quite a
lot. You would've thought that the wild relatives of something
(29:11):
as common as a potato would be well banked and
collected, but not at all. That was one of the
really high- priority crops to collect from, and that was
done by our partners in South America, which is where
potatoes originate. We also collected the cereals, which were collected
mostly in what's called the Fertile Crescent in the Eastern
Mediterranean and places like Cyprus and in Italy and Spain.
We collected African and Asian rice, different varieties relating to
(29:35):
that. Virtually everything we eat is, well, yeah, I mean,
I'm just thinking about what I would eat in my
breakfast. I'm having a slice of bread, which is made
out of wheat, and it's just a grass you're eating,
so it's all linked.
Cate Blanchett (29:51):
But collecting seeds is not always plain sailing.
Dr. Chris Cockel (29:54):
Our partners in Brazil, for example, collecting rice wild relatives
in the tributaries of the Amazon, they were faced with
caiman in the river. So then they were sort of wading
around in the Amazon River, and they were worried about crocodiles.
In other countries, our partners in Lebanon, where we were collecting
a lot of the cereal wild relatives, of course, there's
human conflict going on in some of those places, and
(30:15):
they weren't able to get to areas where the wild
relatives existed because of security issues.
Cate Blanchett (30:20):
Once again, this was a partnership populated by passionate and
determined people. And so despite these issues, the seeds were
collected and then stored for safekeeping.
Dr. Chris Cockel (30:31):
So those wild relative seeds are now at these international crop-
breeding gene banks, and they're available to be incorporated into
breeding projects with the aim of making our domesticated crops
more able to withstand the pressures of climate change and
various pests and diseases that they might be faced with
in the future.
Cate Blanchett (30:49):
It's become very clear to me that the Millennium Seed
Bank thrives because of its global partnerships and that this
isn't just a future- facing mission. Also, it's about deposits
and withdrawals in the present. And the first- ever withdrawal
request struck a very personal note for me.
Dan Duval (31:10):
In late December 2019, there were a number of major
bushfires around South Australia. One of them, which started on the
20th of December 2019, was in Adelaide Hills, and it
was basically catastrophic fire conditions around the state. So this
is where we have very strong winds and very high temperatures.
And this fire that started on the 20th of December was finally put out
(31:32):
on the 3rd of January 2020, but in that time it burnt out 24,
000 hectares, probably 80 to 90 homes were destroyed.
Cate Blanchett (31:41):
As with any disaster on this scale, it's not just
the built environment and we humans that suffer; all of
nature suffers. Dan Duval is senior seed collections officer for
the South Australian Seed Conservation Centre in Adelaide, which has
been working with the Millennium Seed Bank since 2003.
Dan Duval (32:02):
At the time, we were monitoring a number of threatened
species within small reserves in that area, and unfortunately, there
were a number of localized population extinctions of threatened species
that occurred within that fire scar. One of those species
that we thought we lost were a couple of populations
of what we call clover glycine. Clover glycine is a
(32:22):
nationally vulnerable species, so it's something of significance nationwide in
Australia. The populations in Lobethal Park were banked some years
ago, probably 2004. And because we weren't seeing a good
recovery of this plant species post- fire, we knew we needed
(32:42):
to actually utilize some seeds from the seed bank and
use them in post- fire recovery work to reintroduce this
plant species. We couldn't use the seeds from the Seed
Conservation Centre for recovery work within the fire scar because
the population we had banked here in Australia was from
a different location. Fortunately, we had a collection banked near
(33:05):
the fire scar that we'd actually banked with MSB in
the UK.
Cate Blanchett (33:11):
But bringing those seeds back wasn't easy.
Dan Duval (33:14):
One of the challenges was we were repatriating a species
of native plant that was rare from Australia back into country.
Cate Blanchett (33:21):
Now for any of you who have visited my homeland,
you'll know that even bringing muddy boots into the country
is difficult, let alone reintroducing a whole plant species.
Dan Duval (33:34):
Our quarantine service had never dealt with this before, so
they had no process for us to be able to
repatriate the seeds back into our country. So it was
an interesting process to go through to actually ship native
seeds. Originally collected from South Australia, stored in the UK
back into Australia.
Cate Blanchett (33:52):
Returning the seeds to Australia was just the beginning.
Dan Duval (33:56):
The most important thing is to utilize every seed that
we received in the sample. So after nicking the seeds
to remove the physical dormancy and germinate them, and the first
thing we do was grow the seeds and plant them
in a seed orchard. So we want to turn the 100 seeds
or so that we received into 100s of plants that
we can use for reintroduction. We planted seeds that we
(34:17):
germinated in the lab into pots that we then grew
for a period to ensure they were viable. And then
the successful plants were then transplanted to what we call a
seed production area, which are large raised tank beds that
we then harvest plants or harvest seeds from. Those plants
(34:38):
are still in the seed orchard today and are still flowering
and setting seed and still being utilized in projects. Walked
past it yesterday.
Cate Blanchett (34:46):
But of course, the habitat that the seeds were originally
collected in was a very different one to this new fire-
scarred version.
Dan Duval (34:53):
The landscape post- fire was completely different to that prior
to the fire in the sense that it was almost
a moonscape. There was no vegetation cover. There was an
ash layer that was a few centimeters thick. So when
you think about a few months earlier when you could
have visited the glycine, it was a quite shady habitat growing of
mosses, south- facing slopes. It's taken some years for that
(35:17):
landscape to settle down and for that shade or canopy
cover to develop and for that ash layer to become
more minimal. So in 2022, we introduced our first plants
of clover glycine to three sites within the fire scar.
When a fire event of this scale comes in, there's
(35:37):
not a capacity for these small populations to survive these
events. So what we need to do is produce a
resilient population that can survive these sort of events, that
can compete with introduced species that can attract pollinators. And
that's why we've been reintroducing the clover glycine since 2022.
So we've reintroduced hundreds of plants to some of these
sites now, and monitoring back in June by volunteers have
(36:05):
got populations surviving up to 100%. So some populations
some of these populations are now 100% from year to
year. So we're getting success over time. We think we're
doing well, and we're now getting to the point where
those populations are at least equivalent or more to what
the original population was pre- fire. There's more work being
(36:28):
done, and more clover glycine will be introduced.
Cate Blanchett (36:31):
And the long- standing collaboration with the team at Wakehurst
has been key, even up to the present day.
Dan Duval (36:37):
The partnership with MSB has been very significant for the SA Seed
Conservation Centre, partly because the program wouldn't have commenced without
the support of the Millennium Seed Bank, but also the
sharing of knowledge and expertise. We have a seed bank
here in Australia, but if anything were to happen to
our collections, at least we know that we've got these
(36:58):
collections that are managed very well in the UK by
MSB and that we can call on these insurance collections
that are stored in the UK when we need them.
Cate Blanchett (37:08):
Listening to Dan, you begin to grasp the far- reaching
impact of a project set in motion decades ago by
Roger Smith and his colleagues, Simon Linington and Giles Coode‑
Adams. From makeshift lab benches in the old mansion to
a state- of- the- art facility sunk deep beneath the
grounds in Wakehurst, it's an extraordinary journey. And I wondered,
(37:32):
did they ever have a moment when the sheer gravity
of their idea truly settled upon them when they realized
the scale of what they'd begun?
Roger Smith (37:42):
The only time I panicked was when they had started
to build and they had dug the hole into which
the second floor was going to be sunk. And Simon
and I, on a Friday, we sneaked onto the site
and looked in the hole, and that is the point
(38:04):
at which I said to Simon, " What have we started?"
And from there on, there is only one way, which
is out and up.
Cate Blanchett (38:15):
Taking part in this series marked the first time in
many years that Roger had returned to Wakehurst. And as
he stood outside the old stone mansion, 51 years on
from that old butcher's freezer, he reflected on his work
and all that had stemmed from it.
Roger Smith (38:33):
Am I proud? I'm proudest of the fact that a
strange, ragbag of individuals, in which I include myself quite
happily, should come together and do something that had global
significance, we hope. It is 51 years since I walked
(38:56):
in with hair and not really knowing what I'd come
to and what was expected of me. So coming back
today has been quite... I even drove the same route
that I drove from home to come into work. A
lot has changed. It's quite emotional to be back in a
(39:20):
confusing way because what you do is to regret the
things you could have done better. And I wouldn't say
downplay the things you did that worked well. But yes,
you will remember those occasions as you think, " Oh, if
only they could replay the tape," and you'd get there.
(39:42):
But on the whole, it's been fun.
Cate Blanchett (39:49):
They were a self- proclaimed, strange ragbag of individuals who, over
50 years ago, sowed the seeds of a small project
with a big vision. A project that has since grown
into a global endeavor with branches all over the world,
sustained by remarkable people united in their mission to use
(40:15):
the power of wild seeds to secure the future of
our planet. In our next episode, we'll be moving from
the mansion to the modern building that houses the MSB
today. We'll go behind- the- scenes into the laboratories and
the vaults themselves to uncover the extraordinary science of seed
(40:37):
processing and preservation. Seeds we're banking on for our future.
I'm Cate Blanchett, Kew's ambassador for Wakehurst, and this is
Unearthed
your podcasts, and please follow us so you don't miss
a moment of our story. And I invite you to
(40:59):
join me in supporting the vital work of the MSB
by making a donation today. Just click the link in
the episode description to learn more. Until next time, thanks
for listening.
The sound of the leaves underfoot really transported me back home
to Australia the very first time I stumbled upon Wakehurst,
and I found myself in the middle of England in a
glade of eucalypts and Wollemi pines. And the Wollemi for me
has a particular significance because they're a fossil, really, or
(00:30):
a dinosaur tree that were thought to be extinct. And
they were discovered in the Blue Mountains in the mid-
90s. And I got married in the late 90s in the Blue
Mountains. And so the sound of the Wollemis and their
fragrance and the fact that they've been preserved here in
a place like Wakehurst. When I stumbled upon them the
first time I came here, I stood here and I
(00:53):
wept. And I wept because they could be lost, but
they're being protected here at Wakehurst. But also as you
wander through this incredibly unique and magical and precious glade,
it's connected to so many other species from so many
other parts of the world. And you realize that every
tree, every plant, every flower, every seed, whilst it's specific
(01:17):
to a territory, it's all interconnected. And it reminds you
just how precious those songlines are, and they happen here
at Wakehurst. It's a magical, magical place. Wakehurst is Kew's wild and beautiful
botanic garden set deep in the heart of the Sussex
(01:40):
countryside, a sanctuary for nature. You can lose yourself here
as I did in the astonishing diversity of trees, plants,
and grasses covering every inch of its sweeping grounds. But
Wakehurst is so much more than a garden and a
lovely day out. Beyond its beauty lies a living laboratory
(02:02):
where groundbreaking research is shaping the very future of biodiversity.
At the heart of Wakehurst is the Millennium Seed Bank.
Its vaults, hidden underneath the hollows of these grounds, house
almost 2. 5 billion seeds, 40,000 rare, important, and threatened
(02:24):
species from almost every country and territory across the globe.
And they're safely stored, ex situ, protected outside their natural
habitat. It's a modern Noah's Ark, and it's the largest
repository of wild seeds on earth and the most biodiverse
place on our planet. I'm Cate Blanchett, and that experience
(02:46):
that I had in the Wollemi pines was the catalyst
that led me on a journey to becoming Kew's ambassador
for Wakehurst and a champion of the Millennium Seed Bank.
And on this journey, I've learned of the scope of
the work that Wakehurst is doing to preserve the future
of our planet because there's no way around it. We
have to face the fact that our planet is in
(03:08):
crisis. Climate change, deforestation, the relentless unsustainable use of our
natural resources, species disappearing at a pace unprecedented in human
history. Like most people, some days I despair, but the
work being done at Wakehurst gives me hope. The Millennium
(03:32):
Seed Bank holds within its vaults tools to restore habitats,
to bring species back from the brink, to discover how little-
known plants might become our future foods, our medicines, our
materials. In this series we'll go behind the scenes of
this extraordinary partnership to understand its humble roots, the work
(03:54):
it's doing now, and the impact it could have on
our future. And it's a true partnership, an international collaboration
between visionary scientists and devoted collectors, working together on an
insurance policy for our planet. Life begins with seeds, and
so does our best chance to save it. Welcome to
(04:17):
Unearthed
year marks the 25th anniversary of the Millennium Seed Bank,
or the MSB. It's now a world- leading initiative at
(04:38):
the cutting edge of science, but it wasn't quite so cutting-
edge in the beginning. Every great story starts somewhere, and
ours begins over a quarter of a century ago. In
this chapter, we'll meet the visionary people who saw the
future coming.
Roger Smith (04:56):
We sneaked onto the site and looked in the hole,
and that is the point at which I said to Simon, "
What have we started?" And from there on, there is
only one way, which is out and up.
Cate Blanchett (05:11):
And we'll understand how that vision is already bearing fruit.
Dan Duval (05:15):
100s of plants have been introduced working with the community,
but this never would've happened if we didn't bank this in
2006 with MSB.
Cate Blanchett (05:22):
And we'll hear from those continuing to build on the
legacy who are just as passionate about it as the
Seed Bank's founders.
Dr. Chris Cockel (05:30):
Those wild relative seeds are now at these international crop-
breeding gene banks with the aim of making our domesticated
crops more able to withstand the pressures of climate change
and various pests and diseases that they might be faced
with in the future.
Cate Blanchett (05:43):
But let's begin in a place that represents both the
past and the present of this story. While I'm standing
in an American prairie, it's full of native plants, and
I can see rattlesnake master, which is a very tall, sort
of beautiful silvery thistle, and this foxglove, and there's beardtongue, and there's black-
(06:07):
eyed Susans, which I absolutely love. And I mean some
of these grasses and plants are as tall as my
shoulders. It's an American prairie, but I'm not in America.
I am in the heart of Sussex in Wakehurst. And
this landscape is only possible really because of the amazing
work that the Millennium Seed Bank is doing, and more
(06:29):
incongruous perhaps than an American prairie in East Sussex is
the juxtaposition of this prairie with a quintessential English mansion
just ahead. I'm here with Dr. Eleanor Brehman, who's the
senior research leader in seed conservation.
Dr Eleanor Brehman (06:42):
Hi, welcome to Wakehurst.
Cate Blanchett (06:43):
Thank you. I mean, just in the distance, there is
a grade one Elizabethan mansion and that was built around 1570.
Dr Eleanor Brehman (06:49):
1500s.
Cate Blanchett (06:51):
Yeah.
Dr Eleanor Brehman (06:51):
Yeah.
Cate Blanchett (06:51):
And it's old stone. It's almost like something out of
a storybook. So it's very old, but it feels really
at odds with this experimental landscape that we are standing
in. This wild landscape here at Wakehurst. Why did you
want to meet me here?
Dr Eleanor Brehman (07:05):
Well, because this is where seed banking started at Wakehurst.
So the Seed Physiology department moved down from Kew in the
70s. We were based in the mansion originally and actually
had a big walk- in freezer, like one of those
butcher's freezers in the chapel. That was the original seed bank.
Cate Blanchett (07:24):
The seed bank was in the chapel?
Dr Eleanor Brehman (07:26):
And the physiology team were working up in Lady Price's
bedroom, and they were doing some work on one of
the mahogany desks once, and when she came around, and
she was really not very happy that science was being
undertaken on this heirloom of the family. So I think
they got some lab benches in after that.
Cate Blanchett (07:44):
So given that you were able to store seeds in
a butcher's freezer in the mansion, that's not very high-
tech. I mean, obviously the modern building that houses the
seed bank now, for the past 25 years, it's got
a lot more sophisticated freezers than, say, there or I
would have at home. What are the facilities like there?
(08:04):
How would you describe them?
Dr Eleanor Brehman (08:06):
Yeah, I think when we were in the mansion, it
was more in an experimental phase and we were trying
to understand the seed biology that enables seeds to be
dried and then stored at sub- zero temperatures to extend
their lifespan. And we really wanted to know if that
was going to work for wild plant species. Because it
had already been done for agriculture, but they've quite uniform
seeds. So it was that experimental stage, but then we'd
(08:29):
proved the concept and in the 90s collected the UK
flora, so that we could show that it really worked
before going international. And the point of our new facilities,
well now 25 years old, was the scale. We needed
to scale up. So the technology still remained relatively simple.
We're drying, and we're putting in an airtight container and
we're putting in a freezer. So yes, the freezers are
(08:50):
bigger, they've got roller shelving so we can maximize the
space usage, but at the end of the day, it's
just a - 20 freezer, but it's conserving all this biodiversity
from around the world.
Cate Blanchett (09:01):
I mean, people obviously, if they're interested in building a
garden, they buy seeds at their local gardening store. But
why do you think it's so important at this juncture
in human history that we gather and preserve seeds?
Dr Eleanor Brehman (09:16):
45% of all wild plants are faced with extinction. So
the race is on, really, to conserve seeds from those
species before it's too late and we've lost them forever.
Because you don't know what you're losing until it's gone.
Nobody's worked on these; we don't know whether that's the
next medicine, whether it could improve our sustainable agriculture, what
(09:39):
properties it has that we might find useful and might
provide ecosystem services that we're depending on and we don't
even realize.
Cate Blanchett (09:47):
And the way those plants and species have an interdependent culture.
Dr Eleanor Brehman (09:51):
Yeah. And interact with each other to form that ecosystem.
Cate Blanchett (09:54):
So when you say that 45% of plant species are
facing extinction, that isn't just reflective of the UK, is it?
Dr Eleanor Brehman (10:02):
No.
Cate Blanchett (10:02):
I mean, it's a global figure, right?
Dr Eleanor Brehman (10:03):
Yeah. That's plants across the world. So in all environments,
from pole to pole, from sea level to the tops
of mountains, plants are feeling the pressure of human land
use change, overexploitation, invasive species, pollution, and then climate change
as well. So it's not a very friendly environment for
(10:23):
a lot of our plants anymore.
Cate Blanchett (10:25):
I don't know whether it's that I've specifically noticed that
there's fewer plants around, but I have noticed, particularly in
summer, when you go for a long drive, there are
not as many bugs-
Dr Eleanor Brehman (10:35):
No.
Cate Blanchett (10:35):
- On the windshield.
Dr Eleanor Brehman (10:36):
No.
Cate Blanchett (10:36):
There's fewer butterflies, fewer bees when you're out in nature,
not here in the American prairie, of course, but is
that a direct effect of that 45% loss?
Dr Eleanor Brehman (10:45):
Yeah, I mean, we've seen a dramatic decline in natural
habitats all around the world. I mean, the human population
is expanding, people need places to live, we need to
grow food to eat. So those things have to happen,
but we need to start doing those things in a
smarter way and realizing that we have to do those
things in harmony with nature rather than seeing nature as
(11:06):
a never- ending resource that will just keep being there
or keep bouncing back. We actually need to be supporting
nature. And one of the ways we're doing that is
through seed banking so that we're buying time for these
species, which are feeling a load of pressures in their
natural environments. And we have had partners who go out
on a collecting trip, and something that they rescued earlier
(11:29):
in the year, they go back, and it's gone. They
can't make that collection, and that happens more and more
frequently, unfortunately. We do have wonderful moments as well where
they discover plants that have never been described by science.
So it can work both ways, and I think that's
the beauty of seed banking and this collaborative work around
(11:50):
the world is, its discovery. There's always something new to
learn, and these experts are just giving all of their
time and their knowledge and their passion to making sure that
we have the best possible outcomes for plants going forward
as we can.
Cate Blanchett (12:06):
The Millennium Seed Bank is the largest ex situ wild
plant conservation program in the world. When you say " wild
seeds," what do you actually mean?
Dr Eleanor Brehman (12:16):
Yeah, so it means that they're seeds that have been
collected from their natural habitat, so where they would normally
grow. So this is why we work with partners all
around the world to help them conserve their native floras.
And that's very different to going to an agricultural setting
and taking cultivated material, which are the seeds that you'd
buy in the packets in the garden shop. And it also
(12:39):
means that you are conserving a huge amount of diversity
because these plants in their natural habitats are adapting to
thrive and survive in these changing conditions. And so by
capturing seeds from populations across that species' natural range, you
can capture all of this diversity. And the amazing thing
about seed banking is that you can store all of that in a
(13:00):
really small space, and for a relatively low cost. I
mean, it's a relatively low- tech, simple solution to a
really big problem.
Cate Blanchett (13:08):
How much has the mission changed in that 25 years?
It was so state-of- the- art and cutting- edge, but
also the future probably seemed much further away than it
does here and now.
Dr Eleanor Brehman (13:19):
I mean, when it first opened, there was more of
an acquisition phase. We were just trying to get plants
to be prevented from extinction, get the seeds into the
bank, and know they were safe. But then as we
got more and more species in, that allowed us to
understand more and more plants and their ecology, and actually this
information that we get through germinating the seed and the
data that we're amassing from the field when we collect
(13:42):
the seeds and all of the processing is really, really important
for restoration. And we are then using these seeds. You know it is a bank;
you make deposits and withdrawals, right? So the seeds are
coming back out of the bank. It's not their end
resting place. And the real focus is on supporting active
ecological restoration programs in spaces where the environment is stable
(14:05):
enough to be putting these rare and threatened plants back
into the landscape and that they will still be there
in 10, 20 years' time.
Cate Blanchett (14:12):
The times where I've been in the seed bank, there's
invariably been students and researchers from all around the world.
Is it important for them to come here?
Dr Eleanor Brehman (14:19):
We have really close relationships with our partners, and actually
Australia's a really good case in point because we've been
working with them since 2000. During that time we've helped
develop a wild plant seed bank in every state and
territory in Australia, and they've now formed their own Australian
seed bank partnership. So that's kind of the journey that
we want to go on with all of our partners.
We provide training, we provide resources. Initially we might provide
(14:42):
some funding to get them out to the field and
make those initial collections and help them start, but the
idea is for them all to stand on their own and be
organizations who can manage their own floras.
Cate Blanchett (14:55):
We'll come back to Australia later, but we're having this
conversation, as I mentioned earlier, in the middle of an
American prairie landscape in the middle of Sussex. It's a
landscape that's made up of seeds that are collected from
the USA and brought back here to Wakehurst.
Dr Eleanor Brehman (15:11):
The horticultural team went out to the states and made
collections from existing prairies over there so that we had
that authentic seed mix to put into the prairie land
here. But we've also got those rare, threatened, endangered species
which we collected. We've got in the seed bank, grew
on, and then have mixed in to this kind of
mosaic of planting here. So that visitors could engage with
(15:34):
that story and understand that plants in all corners of
the world are under threat, but they're beautiful and create
these amazing landscapes that we want to be in and
just make us feel happier. And then it has the
links to the seed bank as well, and I love
that about Wakehurst is that there's so much collaboration between
the seed bank and what's going on in the landscape.
(15:56):
It's more than 50% of the plants in the Wakehurst landscape
have been grown from seed that have been collected from
all around the world.
Cate Blanchett (16:06):
Now a seed holds so much potential. But there are
also many different types of seeds, and as we've heard,
what sets the Millennium Seed Bank apart is the fact
that every single seed banked here is wild.
Dr. Chris Cockel (16:19):
I guess the unique selling point of the Millennium Seed
Bank is that we're a wild species seed bank. So
in general, we don't bank domesticated crop seeds. Our role
is to collect the wild and then make them available.
So that was what the project was all about, was
making those seeds available for breeders.
Cate Blanchett (16:34):
This is Dr. Chris Cockel. He's now the UK's conservation
projects coordinator at MSB. But before that, he headed up
a project that focused on collecting the wild relatives of
crops that you and I would think of as food.
Now for many of those species, there's very little family
resemblance that remains.
Dr. Chris Cockel (16:55):
So what we have here are some wild banana seeds.
They're quite large, half a centimeter across perhaps, and the
banana those came from were very small. So there's a
misconception, I guess, that bananas come from the Caribbean. They
were collected in Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand. So what we have
here is a wild banana plant from Vietnam, and this
(17:19):
was grown from seed, from 2016, and the seeds came
from one of our partners for the Adapting Agriculture to
Climate Change project. The main difference you'll see between a
wild banana plant and a cultivated banana plant is the
fruit actually. Part of the domestication process, including with bananas,
is that humans have over millennia created fruit and vegetables
(17:43):
that are palatable, that are edible, that are high- yielding.
So in the case of the wild banana plant, the
fruit is much smaller and it's full of seeds, whereas
the domesticated Cavendish banana, the ones from the supermarket, it
doesn't have seeds in it because they're all generated from clones.
And what you see in the center of the Cavendish
banana is just the remnant of seeds, and also there's
(18:04):
a lot of flesh that you can eat, whereas in
the wild banana, there's virtually nothing that you would think
you would want to eat in there. These plants are
not genetically modified. They are the product of, as I
say, millennia of traditional breeding methods where farmers have taken
different varieties and crossed them with one another to bring
out the traits that we want in terms of yield
(18:26):
and size, taste. There's something called the genetic bottleneck, where
you've come from a very broad genetic base to a
very narrow genetic base, and this makes the domesticated crops
vulnerable to pests and diseases and to changes in climate.
Cate Blanchett (18:42):
It's taken human ingenuity to evolve edible fruits and vegetables
as we know and consume them today, but the same
processes that increase their attractiveness to us as food also
makes them vulnerable to an increasingly threatening future. However, there
are potential solutions to that problem within the wider family tree.
Dr. Chris Cockel (19:04):
There are also still the wild relatives that are out
in the wild, and they contain a lot of adaptive
traits that have been lost in the domesticated crops. So that's
what we're trying to capture when we're collecting the seeds
of these wild species. There's a scale between wild and
domesticated, so we're now at the fully domesticated. There are
intermediate stages as well, semi- domesticated, and these are called
(19:25):
heritage varieties. And then there's the truly wild, and the
further away from the domesticated you get, the more difficult
it is to breed those wild ones with the domesticated
because they're almost different species. In some cases they are
different species.
Cate Blanchett (19:38):
These are called crop wild relatives, and they're really important.
Dr. Chris Cockel (19:42):
The important thing about the crop wild relatives is that
we can take those adaptive traits, and through traditional breeding
methods, we can breed back into the domesticated crops some
of those important traits that have been lost. And by reintroducing
some of those lost wild traits, you can make our
domesticated crops more capable to withstand the different pressures they're
going to face in the future.
Cate Blanchett (20:03):
So much of the work of the partnership projects of
the Millennium Seed Bank are future facing and will focus
specifically on the work going on in order to future-
proof in episode three. But for now, let's step back
in time, not as far back as the dawn of
agriculture before crops were ever domesticated, but to the early
(20:24):
1970s, when it was agricultural industry itself that inspired an idea.
Roger Smith (20:33):
Looking back, what we were actually doing was seeing how
much of the technology that they used in crops to
conserve seeds could be successfully applied to undomesticated, wild plants.
And it was a case of then beg, stealing, borrowing
(20:54):
ideas to solve the problems that we had of seed storage.
Cate Blanchett (21:00):
This is Roger Smith; he's one of the founding fathers
of the Millennium Seed Bank. And now decades later, he's
striding over to meet us in a brightly colored stripy
jumper, with a mysterious smile.
Roger Smith (21:13):
I came in 1974 as the seed collector, and then
I became the head of the seed bank project in 2000.
Cate Blanchett (21:25):
We talked to him back outside the old stone mansion
where it all began.
Roger Smith (21:30):
At Kew, they had a refrigerated collection of seeds, which
they used to share with other botanic gardens, and it was
big enough when it did come down here to go
into the boot of a Ford Cortina; that's how it
was transported down. And it went into the chapel. So
(21:54):
if you like, the chapel changed from saving souls to
saving seeds.
Cate Blanchett (21:59):
But the job of saving seeds was new and it
was not straightforward.
Roger Smith (22:04):
So we were covering everything from " Can you actually collect
these seeds," and then insufficient number. Then we had to learn how
to clean seeds so that you ended up with just
seeds and not seeds and bits of rubbish because you're
trying to get the smallest volume that you can of
(22:27):
viable seeds. The other thing you can't do is damage
the seeds. And we had a few experiments in there
where we did end up with flour, rather than seeds.
It was learning just like that as you went along;
not one question off, move on to the next. At
the same time we learned keeping them in the building,
(22:48):
in the open, they would die or begin to die
in a couple of years. So you had to find out
how to keep them dry and viable. And then when
you've got the seeds, you've then got to learn how
to germinate them to turn them back into plants because
if you can't turn them back into plants, then what
(23:10):
was the point? And so it goes on, and never-
ending sort of beg, steal, or borrow any idea you
could find that appeared to solve the problem you'd just
bumped into. We had 20 years of learning how to
become an overnight sensation.
Cate Blanchett (23:29):
And 20 years of learning came with its own particular challenges.
Roger Smith (23:34):
We started to accumulate more research evidence at the same
time that the conditions that we were putting them into
were the best for the seeds, with a compromise for
the economics of running it and the health and safety,
because at one point we had a room that was
not at - 20; it was at - 40. And the minute you'd say
(23:59):
minus 40, you have to go through a whole set
of medical examinations to make sure you are not going
to have a heart attack when you walk in or
walk out. It was a little bit of a Boy
Scouts adventure, I suppose, if you like, in that respect.
It was not, " Here you are, sit there, this is what
(24:20):
you do." It was a case of " This is what
we want to do. How do you think we do
it?" It was adventurous.
Cate Blanchett (24:28):
There's a strong thread, I think, that you'll hear throughout
this series, and that's the passion and determination of like-
minded people from across the globe not taking no for
an answer. People who were pushing the existing boundaries of
science as they play their part in securing the future
of our planet. And that passion was there from the
(24:50):
beginning. For the people at the heart of the MSB, it's
not a job; it's a true vocation.
Roger Smith (24:57):
I think I had thought I was joining a job.
Where it became an obsession. And yes, I suppose more
and more people in the world of biology and botany
who were concerned about species loss but didn't know what
to do about it. For us, the mentality was, " Well,
(25:20):
we've got to start somewhere, and we'll find out as
we go along." Because that's what humans have always done.
And so that when the Millennium Commission comes along and
offers large sums of money for something that is not
business as usual but is something of a grander scale,
(25:41):
they wanted it to... I reread the establishing paperwork; they
wanted the projects to last for the next 30 generations,
which is another millennium. We'll happily... By that time we
had seen research that showed that some seeds could last
for even longer than that. So we could meet their
(26:04):
sort of ambition. And we had enough partners who'd visited,
learned around the world that we could say, and " We'll
work on a global scale, and we'll do 10%," which is the
rate at which species are reported to be becoming threatened with
extinction. Having got that, I moved my job to go
(26:26):
and meet partners and persuade them, would they join in.
Made relatively easy by that time by the Convention on
Biological Diversity, which had been, I think, in 1993, and
there is my favorite bit in the preamble, which says
(26:50):
that lack of full scientific certainty should not be a
reason for not acting. So they all signed up and
stood up, and then the rest, as they say, is history.
Cate Blanchett (27:06):
If they hadn't signed up and stood up, that history
would look very different today, and so would our future.
I was really, really struck by Roger recounting the early
days of the Millennium Seed Bank. I mean, ultimately it
was a group of people who strongly believed in action,
not just talking about it, but action to preserve our
(27:26):
planet. They might've been thinking about seeds, but they were
thinking big. And the Millennium Seed Bank still thinks big
today. Chris Cockel worked with partners in 25 countries around
the world to coordinate seed collecting efforts for the Crop
Wild Relatives project.
Dr. Chris Cockel (27:45):
So our partners went out and collected the seeds of the
wild relatives. They sent two- thirds of the collections to
us, and they retained one- third of the collection in their
home countries. And then further down the line, our role
was to send a portion of those seeds to crop
breeders. So from the very start of the project we
had an end use for these seeds. There were two years spent
(28:07):
at the very beginning of the project, from 2011 to 2013, when
a gap analysis was conducted. And this basically looked at
what was already stored in seed banks around the world
and also decided which were the priority crops. And it
turned out that almost 30% of those wild relatives were
not represented in seed banks at all, and up to
95% of them were not geographically represented. So you are
(28:30):
missing a lot of the genetic diversity that you get
from collecting species from across its geographic range. So for
instance, one of the very basic crop wild relatives we
were collecting was the relative of the carrot. So whereas
the domesticated carrot that you would buy in the supermarket is a
nice, long orange vegetable, the wild relative is just a
gnarly root that you probably wouldn't want to eat. It's
(28:51):
almost like a weed. And that was what was missing
in existing collections. And so that material wasn't available for
breeders to use. The project focused on 29 important crops;
some crops will have more wild relatives than others, like
bananas, only have a few, but aubergine have quite a
lot. You would've thought that the wild relatives of something
(29:11):
as common as a potato would be well banked and
collected, but not at all. That was one of the
really high- priority crops to collect from, and that was
done by our partners in South America, which is where
potatoes originate. We also collected the cereals, which were collected
mostly in what's called the Fertile Crescent in the Eastern
Mediterranean and places like Cyprus and in Italy and Spain.
We collected African and Asian rice, different varieties relating to
(29:35):
that. Virtually everything we eat is, well, yeah, I mean,
I'm just thinking about what I would eat in my
breakfast. I'm having a slice of bread, which is made
out of wheat, and it's just a grass you're eating,
so it's all linked.
Cate Blanchett (29:51):
But collecting seeds is not always plain sailing.
Dr. Chris Cockel (29:54):
Our partners in Brazil, for example, collecting rice wild relatives
in the tributaries of the Amazon, they were faced with
caiman in the river. So then they were sort of wading
around in the Amazon River, and they were worried about crocodiles.
In other countries, our partners in Lebanon, where we were collecting
a lot of the cereal wild relatives, of course, there's
human conflict going on in some of those places, and
(30:15):
they weren't able to get to areas where the wild
relatives existed because of security issues.
Cate Blanchett (30:20):
Once again, this was a partnership populated by passionate and
determined people. And so despite these issues, the seeds were
collected and then stored for safekeeping.
Dr. Chris Cockel (30:31):
So those wild relative seeds are now at these international crop-
breeding gene banks, and they're available to be incorporated into
breeding projects with the aim of making our domesticated crops
more able to withstand the pressures of climate change and
various pests and diseases that they might be faced with
in the future.
Cate Blanchett (30:49):
It's become very clear to me that the Millennium Seed
Bank thrives because of its global partnerships and that this
isn't just a future- facing mission. Also, it's about deposits
and withdrawals in the present. And the first- ever withdrawal
request struck a very personal note for me.
Dan Duval (31:10):
In late December 2019, there were a number of major
bushfires around South Australia. One of them, which started on the
20th of December 2019, was in Adelaide Hills, and it
was basically catastrophic fire conditions around the state. So this
is where we have very strong winds and very high temperatures.
And this fire that started on the 20th of December was finally put out
(31:32):
on the 3rd of January 2020, but in that time it burnt out 24,
000 hectares, probably 80 to 90 homes were destroyed.
Cate Blanchett (31:41):
As with any disaster on this scale, it's not just
the built environment and we humans that suffer; all of
nature suffers. Dan Duval is senior seed collections officer for
the South Australian Seed Conservation Centre in Adelaide, which has
been working with the Millennium Seed Bank since 2003.
Dan Duval (32:02):
At the time, we were monitoring a number of threatened
species within small reserves in that area, and unfortunately, there
were a number of localized population extinctions of threatened species
that occurred within that fire scar. One of those species
that we thought we lost were a couple of populations
of what we call clover glycine. Clover glycine is a
(32:22):
nationally vulnerable species, so it's something of significance nationwide in
Australia. The populations in Lobethal Park were banked some years
ago, probably 2004. And because we weren't seeing a good
recovery of this plant species post- fire, we knew we needed
(32:42):
to actually utilize some seeds from the seed bank and
use them in post- fire recovery work to reintroduce this
plant species. We couldn't use the seeds from the Seed
Conservation Centre for recovery work within the fire scar because
the population we had banked here in Australia was from
a different location. Fortunately, we had a collection banked near
(33:05):
the fire scar that we'd actually banked with MSB in
the UK.
Cate Blanchett (33:11):
But bringing those seeds back wasn't easy.
Dan Duval (33:14):
One of the challenges was we were repatriating a species
of native plant that was rare from Australia back into country.
Cate Blanchett (33:21):
Now for any of you who have visited my homeland,
you'll know that even bringing muddy boots into the country
is difficult, let alone reintroducing a whole plant species.
Dan Duval (33:34):
Our quarantine service had never dealt with this before, so
they had no process for us to be able to
repatriate the seeds back into our country. So it was
an interesting process to go through to actually ship native
seeds. Originally collected from South Australia, stored in the UK
back into Australia.
Cate Blanchett (33:52):
Returning the seeds to Australia was just the beginning.
Dan Duval (33:56):
The most important thing is to utilize every seed that
we received in the sample. So after nicking the seeds
to remove the physical dormancy and germinate them, and the first
thing we do was grow the seeds and plant them
in a seed orchard. So we want to turn the 100 seeds
or so that we received into 100s of plants that
we can use for reintroduction. We planted seeds that we
(34:17):
germinated in the lab into pots that we then grew
for a period to ensure they were viable. And then
the successful plants were then transplanted to what we call a
seed production area, which are large raised tank beds that
we then harvest plants or harvest seeds from. Those plants
(34:38):
are still in the seed orchard today and are still flowering
and setting seed and still being utilized in projects. Walked
past it yesterday.
Cate Blanchett (34:46):
But of course, the habitat that the seeds were originally
collected in was a very different one to this new fire-
scarred version.
Dan Duval (34:53):
The landscape post- fire was completely different to that prior
to the fire in the sense that it was almost
a moonscape. There was no vegetation cover. There was an
ash layer that was a few centimeters thick. So when
you think about a few months earlier when you could
have visited the glycine, it was a quite shady habitat growing of
mosses, south- facing slopes. It's taken some years for that
(35:17):
landscape to settle down and for that shade or canopy
cover to develop and for that ash layer to become
more minimal. So in 2022, we introduced our first plants
of clover glycine to three sites within the fire scar.
When a fire event of this scale comes in, there's
(35:37):
not a capacity for these small populations to survive these
events. So what we need to do is produce a
resilient population that can survive these sort of events, that
can compete with introduced species that can attract pollinators. And
that's why we've been reintroducing the clover glycine since 2022.
So we've reintroduced hundreds of plants to some of these
sites now, and monitoring back in June by volunteers have
(36:05):
got populations surviving up to 100%. So some populations
some of these populations are now 100% from year to
year. So we're getting success over time. We think we're
doing well, and we're now getting to the point where
those populations are at least equivalent or more to what
the original population was pre- fire. There's more work being
(36:28):
done, and more clover glycine will be introduced.
Cate Blanchett (36:31):
And the long- standing collaboration with the team at Wakehurst
has been key, even up to the present day.
Dan Duval (36:37):
The partnership with MSB has been very significant for the SA Seed
Conservation Centre, partly because the program wouldn't have commenced without
the support of the Millennium Seed Bank, but also the
sharing of knowledge and expertise. We have a seed bank
here in Australia, but if anything were to happen to
our collections, at least we know that we've got these
(36:58):
collections that are managed very well in the UK by
MSB and that we can call on these insurance collections
that are stored in the UK when we need them.
Cate Blanchett (37:08):
Listening to Dan, you begin to grasp the far- reaching
impact of a project set in motion decades ago by
Roger Smith and his colleagues, Simon Linington and Giles Coode‑
Adams. From makeshift lab benches in the old mansion to
a state- of- the- art facility sunk deep beneath the
grounds in Wakehurst, it's an extraordinary journey. And I wondered,
(37:32):
did they ever have a moment when the sheer gravity
of their idea truly settled upon them when they realized
the scale of what they'd begun?
Roger Smith (37:42):
The only time I panicked was when they had started
to build and they had dug the hole into which
the second floor was going to be sunk. And Simon
and I, on a Friday, we sneaked onto the site
and looked in the hole, and that is the point
(38:04):
at which I said to Simon, " What have we started?"
And from there on, there is only one way, which
is out and up.
Cate Blanchett (38:15):
Taking part in this series marked the first time in
many years that Roger had returned to Wakehurst. And as
he stood outside the old stone mansion, 51 years on
from that old butcher's freezer, he reflected on his work
and all that had stemmed from it.
Roger Smith (38:33):
Am I proud? I'm proudest of the fact that a
strange, ragbag of individuals, in which I include myself quite
happily, should come together and do something that had global
significance, we hope. It is 51 years since I walked
(38:56):
in with hair and not really knowing what I'd come
to and what was expected of me. So coming back
today has been quite... I even drove the same route
that I drove from home to come into work. A
lot has changed. It's quite emotional to be back in a
(39:20):
confusing way because what you do is to regret the
things you could have done better. And I wouldn't say
downplay the things you did that worked well. But yes,
you will remember those occasions as you think, " Oh, if
only they could replay the tape," and you'd get there.
(39:42):
But on the whole, it's been fun.
Cate Blanchett (39:49):
They were a self- proclaimed, strange ragbag of individuals who, over
50 years ago, sowed the seeds of a small project
with a big vision. A project that has since grown
into a global endeavor with branches all over the world,
sustained by remarkable people united in their mission to use
(40:15):
the power of wild seeds to secure the future of
our planet. In our next episode, we'll be moving from
the mansion to the modern building that houses the MSB
today. We'll go behind- the- scenes into the laboratories and
the vaults themselves to uncover the extraordinary science of seed
(40:37):
processing and preservation. Seeds we're banking on for our future.
I'm Cate Blanchett, Kew's ambassador for Wakehurst, and this is
Unearthed
your podcasts, and please follow us so you don't miss
a moment of our story. And I invite you to
(40:59):
join me in supporting the vital work of the MSB
by making a donation today. Just click the link in
the episode description to learn more. Until next time, thanks
for listening.
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