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Gene banks preserve crop wild relatives by collecting and documenting plant material, storing it in a form suited to the species, and maintaining it so it remains viable and useful. Many seeds can be dried and kept cold; others need living field collections, tissue culture, or cryopreservation. Monitoring, careful regeneration, backup storage, reliable records, and controlled distribution are all part of preservation—not optional extras.
Crop wild relatives are wild plant species related to cultivated crops. Their traits can help breeders address challenges such as pests, disease, and environmental stress. A gene bank provides an offsite reserve and a route to use that material, while conservation in natural habitats remains important too.
What a gene bank preserves—and why it matters
A gene bank, also called a genebank, is an organized system for conserving plant genetic material outside its natural habitat and making it available for future use. It may hold seeds, living plants, or plant tissue, depending on what can be maintained safely for a particular species. Its role is both protective and practical: keep material from being lost, and retain enough information about it that researchers and breeders can find and use it.
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Wild relatives of crops can carry traits relevant to breeding, including resistance to pests and diseases, nutritional qualities, and tolerance of environmental stresses. Those traits are not automatically present in every sample, nor does storing a sample prove that it will be useful. The collection must preserve a meaningful range of diversity, and its records and characterization data must help users identify promising material.
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Ex situ conservation—conservation away from the species’ natural habitat—complements rather than replaces in situ conservation in the wild. Natural populations continue to exist and evolve in their habitats; a stored accession is a reserve, not a substitute for protecting those populations. FAO’s voluntary guidelines connect national planning for crop wild relatives with both in situ conservation and ex situ collections.
Scale figures need to be read in context. CGIAR Genebanks reported 730,000 accessions across its 11 genebanks on its conservation page accessed in 2026; that is an institutional figure, not a count of all genebank holdings worldwide. Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank page, also accessed in 2026, reported more than 2.4 billion seeds representing almost 40,000 species in its wild-plant collection. That total is not a count of crop wild relatives alone.
How a sample becomes a usable accession
1. Plan collection around gaps and diversity
Before collecting, conservation programs consider what is already represented in existing collections and where important gaps remain. For crop wild relatives, a useful collection aims to capture meaningful geographic and ecological diversity rather than simply accumulate samples. Priorities and procedures vary with national data, policy, institutions, and resources; FAO’s voluntary guidelines frame the planning challenge but do not prescribe one identical collection plan for every country.
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2. Record identity, origin, and handling needs
Genebanks maintain passport data and other information that helps establish what an accession is and where it came from. Records can include plant identification, collection provenance, viability and longevity information, and knowledge about dormancy-breaking. They may also capture characterization and evaluation data, such as observed traits. Kew’s seed-bank curation information describes efforts to maximize germination while avoiding selection during the life cycle, because handling and propagation can affect which plants contribute to later stocks.
Good records matter at every later stage: choosing storage conditions, deciding when to test or regenerate a lot, interpreting its traits, and fulfilling a request. An accession without dependable, backed-up information is harder to protect and much less useful to breeders.
Why storage methods differ by species
The decisive question is whether the material can tolerate the drying and cold storage used for many seeds. FAO standards describe separate workflows for orthodox seeds, field genebanks, and in vitro culture and cryopreservation. These are different approaches to biological material and conservation needs, not interchangeable versions of one universal storage recipe.
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|---|---|---|---|
| Orthodox seed storage | Seeds that tolerate drying and cold storage. | Acquisition and processing, drying and storage, viability monitoring, regeneration, characterization, evaluation, documentation, distribution, safety duplication, and security. | Conditions and monitoring must suit the species and the collection; one temperature is not a universal specification. |
| Field genebank | Living plants maintained in field collections. | Site selection, collection establishment, field management, regeneration and propagation, characterization, evaluation, documentation, distribution, security, and safety duplication. | Material remains alive as plants, so the collection requires ongoing field management and protection. |
| In vitro culture | Plant material maintained under controlled culture conditions, including slow-growth storage where appropriate. | Screening for non-orthodox behavior, assessing water content and viability, hydrated storage for recalcitrant seeds where relevant, culture, documentation, distribution, exchange, and security. | The culture method must be suited to the material and maintained by the institution. |
| Cryopreservation | Plant material preserved using cryogenic storage as part of a species-appropriate protocol. | Assessment and preparation of material, cryopreservation, documentation, distribution or exchange, and security. | It is a specialized method, not a simple universal substitute for a conventional freezer. |
Kew offers a concrete example for orthodox seeds at its Millennium Seed Bank: its page states that material is dried to 15% equilibrium relative humidity and stored at −20°C. Those are Kew’s stated practices, not a blanket rule for all crop wild relatives or all genebanks.
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What happens when seeds cannot be conventionally stored?
Some seeds are recalcitrant: they do not tolerate the drying needed for conventional long-term seed storage. Other material may be scarce, sensitive to conventional freezer storage, or difficult to germinate after storage because of complex dormancy. In such cases, the bank must choose a different conservation approach, which may involve hydrated storage, in vitro culture, field collections, or cryopreservation. The appropriate choice depends on the species and the material available.
Kew’s Seed Collection page says current data suggest around one in ten species have recalcitrant seeds, with substantial variation by habitat; it notes that the share among trees and shrubs can be much higher in moist tropical forests. This is a broad estimate about species, not a measurement of crop wild relatives specifically.
These exceptions affect the whole preservation plan. A seed that cannot be dried cannot simply be placed in the same storage process as orthodox seed. A living field collection or culture may need continuing care, while cryopreservation requires a suitable technical protocol. FAO’s standards and practical guides address these distinct workflows, but they do not establish one method as universally best or cheapest.
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How viability checks and regeneration protect a collection
Storage does not freeze a collection’s maintenance responsibilities. Over time, a seed lot may lose viability—the capacity to germinate and grow. Genebanks monitor viability and regenerate material when necessary to maintain enough viable stock for conservation and distribution.
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Regeneration means growing plants from stored material and collecting new seed or propagating material for the accession. It must be done carefully: if only a small or unrepresentative subset contributes to the next generation, the regenerated stock may not retain the accession’s original genetic composition. CGIAR guidance says regeneration should maintain genetic integrity and seed longevity, following best practices while ensuring sufficient material remains available.
There is a practical balance. Regenerating too late risks losing viability or running short of material; regenerating unnecessarily creates additional handling and opportunities for changes in representation. Monitoring and records help curators decide when intervention is needed. Kew also describes maximizing germination while avoiding selection during the life cycle, reflecting the need to preserve more than just the ability to produce some seedlings.
Characterization and evaluation add information that can turn a conserved sample into a useful breeding resource. Examples include yield, resistance to pests and diseases, nutritional qualities, and tolerance of abiotic stresses. These observations supplement passport data; they do not guarantee a trait will transfer directly into a cultivated crop or perform the same way in every breeding context.
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Why backup storage and data security are essential
A collection is exposed to risks beyond gradual loss of seed viability. Equipment failure, accidents, and other disruptions can threaten stored material, while damaged or missing records can make surviving material difficult to identify. CGIAR guidance treats offsite safety duplication as essential for all accessions and says duplicates should be renewed when needed.
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Safety duplication means keeping a backup of conserved material at a separate location, reducing the chance that one local disaster destroys both the working collection and its reserve. It works only if the duplicate remains traceable and its condition is managed. Genebanks also need sound accession information management, including backup, recovery, and restoration of data, plus risk mitigation measures, emergency procedures, and recovery plans.
Material and information are linked safeguards. A physically secure sample with unusable records may be difficult to deploy; a complete database cannot replace a lost sample. A functioning conservation system plans for both.
How breeders and researchers can access conserved material
Genebanks distribute seed or other planting material for research and breeding, but access is governed by the collection’s rules and applicable international legislation, agreements, and phytosanitary controls. Phytosanitary requirements address the movement of plant material and related plant-health risks. Conditions vary by institution, material, and applicable agreement, so a prospective user should follow the specific genebank’s request process rather than assume one worldwide access rule.
CGIAR says its collections are available to researchers, breeders, communities, and farmers under Plant Treaty terms. That describes CGIAR’s collection framework; it should not be generalized to every gene bank. Users seeking a particular accession should consult the holding institution for availability, request procedures, permitted use, and any shipping or plant-health conditions.
For breeding, the useful path is not merely “find a wild seed.” A user needs to identify material with relevant provenance and characterization information, request it under the correct conditions, and then evaluate it for the intended purpose. Genebank records help narrow the search; subsequent breeding and evaluation determine whether a trait can contribute to a crop variety.
What preservation can—and cannot—guarantee
Gene banks provide a managed reserve and access system, not a promise that every stored accession will remain unchanged indefinitely or contain a desired trait. Preservation depends on collection design, sound identification and provenance, a storage method matched to the biology, viability monitoring, careful regeneration, offsite duplication, and resilient data systems. If any part fails, either the material or its usefulness can be compromised.
Nor can ex situ collections replace wild habitats. The two approaches serve related but different purposes: a genebank conserves material under managed conditions and can make it available for use, while conservation in natural settings protects populations in place. For future breeding, the strongest system connects those efforts with reliable records and responsible access.
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