Banking on food

Dan Marcus

1st November, 2007

Deep in rural Sussex at Wakehurst Place, in a large nature reserve of 500 acres of National Trust woodlands and lakes, stands the Kew Gardens Biological Research Centre. Sixty feet beneath is a nuclear bunker. This is the British National Doomsday vault, home to the UK’s Millennium Seed Bank (MSB). If apocalyptic disaster strikes, this bunker will hold key bio-scientists and all remaining plant life.

The MSB is the largest single conservation project in the world; the fulcrum of a network that spans the globe, involving hundreds of scientists and researchers – the seedprotectors – who dispatch their finds in airmail packages from 80 centres around the world. When the work is complete, Kew’s MSB will hold the seeds of 30 per cent of the green germ plasm on the planet – around 200 main plant species – that could be used for food crops.

At the bottom of a steep spiral staircase is a massive steel blast- and fire-door, made by Chubb safe company, which leads to a white sterile airlock and, beyond that, a rarefied atmosphere, where special air-conditioning maintains low temperatures and zero humidity. Off the central hub are the seed rooms where the temperature is kept at -20°C, to protect the seeds, hold them in ‘suspended animation’ and stop them from germinating. Endless racks hold row upon row of Kilner jars, each sealed to protect its contents for up to 500 years.

Here our plant history is being archived. It’s the biological equivalent of the British Library – and both stand testament to the development of our civilisation.

The contents...

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