Press release - Jardí Botŕnic de Valéncia, Spain
ENSCONET, the European Native Seed Conservation Network walked its first steps last November after a long preparation process. The network, headed by the Millennium Seed Bank (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew), is composed of 19 institutes from 12 European countries, covering 5 of the 6 major bio-geographical regions of Europe.
ENSCONET aims to co-ordinate and enhance activities of several European seed banks, botanical gardens or institutes interested in seed conservation, in order to reduce duplicated efforts in establishing and improving technologies for seed collecting, curation and data management by working independently. That would be achieved through creating common working protocols, compiling data on species held in European seed banks and at a later stage by the creation of a virtual seed bank for European native plants and the establishment of a list of priority species for collection.
ENSCONET’s perspective is that it essential to preserve seed diversity in order to avoid the extinction of native species from European regions. ENSCONET work is organised in four main activities: collection, curation, data management and dissemination. To foster communication amongst partners and to create a space for exchanges of practices and knowledge on seed conservation and collection, an annual meeting is organized yearly in one of the partner’s country. Additionally, exchanges of staff, protocols, knowledge and facilities are planned with the goal of building a sustainable and effective network.
Another major component is the dissemination of information on the network and seed conservation through a website, posters and various information documents.
The first annual meeting took place at the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania, in Crete on June 13-19, 2005. Each activity leader presented the progress made; for example a preliminary draft of a common collecting protocol was discussed and improved during the meeting to be subsequently tested by members during collecting. Also discussed were issues regarding criteria to describe species held in banks (for exemple, the use of vernacular names and the importance of determining the family), ways to prioritize species for collection (by defining the area of endemicity, or their threatened status) and the utility of GIS (Geographic Information System) in doing that.
Finally there was an opportunity for understanding the actual status of some of the endemic species of Crete and for experimenting the challenges that seed collectors may face in such an environment as Crete.
The next annual meeting in 2006 will be organized by the Botanic Garden of the University of Valencia. | For further information, please contact:
Mr Amparo Amblar
Journalist. Press officer for Ensconet project
press@ensconet.com
+34651123127
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Supported by the EU through FP5 and FP6