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The Leningrad botanists who saved the first seed bank
- bfelbo 2y agoWe might need to preserve seeds again due to climate change. Impressive to read about those who literally sacrificed their life during a siege for science and the future of humanity. Thanks for sharing.
- Etheryte 2y agoThere are multiple national and international initiatives that have been building seed banks for a long time, what do you mean with the again?
- mmooss 2y agoAlso, there's talk of putting one on the moon.
- Arch-TK 2y agoDon't seed banks need regular refreshing?
- throwup238 2y agoIdeally yes but scientists have grown crops from single seeds that are thousands of years old so as long as the facilities passively maintain a low temperature, many of them will be viable for a very long time.
- Blahah 2y agoSeed banks are mostly self-refreshing. Seed viability decline during storage is measured and modelled for. A sample of seeds is taken out of storage and grown to breed a new batch of seeds after an amount of time based on the rate of decline of that sample. So a batch that loses 20% viability every 5 years will be regrown to seed after a shorter amount of time than one that loses 2% viability every 5 years. Source: was a seed germination and dormancy researcher at the Millennium Seed Bank
- Arch-TK 2y agoYeah but even if the viability decline was quite slow on the moon, you would still have to refresh _eventually_, at least that's how I understand what you wrote. Are we going to have robots on the moon doing the refreshing? That would be cool.
- josefx 2y agoIf you have everything on the moon needed to grow a large amount of plants couldn't you also support a human or two?
- quietbritishjim 2y agoI'm the context of this comment chain, you're agreeing with the parent comment with a tone of disagreement. Yes, seed banks need periodic attention (whether you call that refreshing or self-refreshing or whatever), so you couldn't stick a bunch of seeds on the moon and just leave them there.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ahazred8ta 2y agoThe proposed lunar seed bank is cryogenic, not room temperature.
- nsxwolf 2y agoWhat is the meaning of "self-refreshing" there, though? That sounds like a lot of work.
- mmooss 2y agoThere are relatively serious plans for permanent habitation on the moon. Transporting seeds occasionally hopefully won't require launching a lot of mass, but I don't know how many seeds they store.
- vbezhenar 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault After nuclear war I'm going to head there.
- Etheryte 2y agoI love the fact that [0] is one of the videos you see when you look it up on Google Maps. [0] https://maps.app.goo.gl/fWHX7Ba4B6H9iemf7 https://maps.app.goo.gl/fWHX7Ba4B6H9iemf7
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 2y agoVirtual tour of the vault: https://virtualtourcompany.co.uk/GlobalSeedVault/index.html https://virtualtourcompany.co.uk/GlobalSeedVault/index.html
- BurningFrog 2y agoThe food should last quite a while!
- lofaszvanitt 2y agoIt will be heavily guarded.
- martyvis 2y agoThere is a wonderful plant bank here in Sydney, Australia. Lots of thick mud walls and other sophistications to outlast weather and similar incidents. https://www.botanicgardens.org.au/our-science/science-facilities/australian-plantbank/visit-plantbank https://www.botanicgardens.org.au/our-science/science-facili...
- dylan604 2y agoCosmos with Neil Degrasse Tyson also did an episode on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaqVg6BXXtA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaqVg6BXXtA
- unlog 2y ago> The uploader has not made this video available in your country We really need a civilization changing event to rethink some stuff.
- teddyh 2y ago<magnet:?xt=urn:btih:2650E9B1E36E713DD78BAFC638408A491854B839>
- juno_oneohsix 2y agoThe same stopmotion animation studio that did the film Anomalisa did this episode!
- jhbadger 2y agoElise Blackwell wrote "Hunger", a novel about these botanists, which I thought was well done.
- AcerbicZero 2y ago[flagged]
- FpUser 2y agoCan't pass that lying dog without kicking?
- sedan_baklazhan 2y agoI doubt you will ever understand what the siege was really like, while you are making fun of it. Is it really that fun?
- satao 2y agoah yes, the Soviet Union that turned a country that was still feudal in the 20th century into a country that sent the first human to space 50 years later for sure was very against science.
- nextaccountic 2y agoI actually overall agree with your point, but to be fair the off topic remark probably was targeted at this bit of pseudoscience that unfortunately dominated Soviet politics for decades, and its influence in Soviet and Chinese agricultural policy ultimately contributed to the death of millions of people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko#Repression_of_biologists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko#Repression_of_b... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine#Agricultural_techniques https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine#Agricultu... https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/trofim-lysenko-soviet-union-russia/548786/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/trofim-l... Note that Nikolai Vavilov, a scientist that preserved the seedbank cited in the Guardian article, was actually purged due to Lysenko's crusade against genetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov > Vavilov's work was criticized by Trofim Lysenko, whose anti-Mendelian concepts of plant biology had won favor with Joseph Stalin. As a result, Vavilov was arrested and subsequently sentenced to death in July 1941. Although his sentence was commuted to twenty years' imprisonment, he died in prison in 1943. In 1955, his death sentence was retroactively pardoned under Nikita Khrushchev. By the late 1950s, his reputation was publicly rehabilitated, and he began to be hailed as a hero of Soviet science.[4]
- yeetusus 2y agosee: Lysenkoism
- lofaszvanitt 2y agoWhat kind of cabbage is that? I mean look at their size.
- codesnik 2y agoum, a normal one? it looks exactly what I've seen on my grandmother's garden patch in my childhood. It's just that size is not very practical for supermarkets and a small family consumption, so current selection and harvesting methods go in the opposite direction.
- lofaszvanitt 2y agoInteresting. I've never seen such a huge cabbage.
- erie 2y agoThere is also a more recent one in Syria :"How Seeds from War-Torn Syria Could Help Save American Wheat - May 14, 2018 https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-seeds-from-war-torn-syria-could-help-save-american-wheat https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-seeds-from-war-torn-syria... And another take on it here: How Syrians Saved an Ancient Seedbank From Civil War When civil war broke out in Syria, Ahmed Amri immediately thought about seeds. Specifically, 141,000 packets of them sitting in cold storage 19 miles south of Aleppo. https://www.wired.com/2015/04/syrians-saved-ancient-seedbank-civil-war/ https://www.wired.com/2015/04/syrians-saved-ancient-seedbank...
- surfingdino 2y agoPity the Ukrainian seed bank did not survive the Russians https://www.newscientist.com/article/2321008-priceless-samples-from-ukraines-seed-bank-destroyed-in-bomb-attack/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2321008-priceless-sampl...
- cschmid 2y agoThere's a song about this: 'When The War Came' by The Decemberists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJHOiQ2uniU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJHOiQ2uniU
- IYasha 2y agoAlmost cried while reading this. I knew the story vaguely, but those details...