TEDTalks2009---Jonathan Drori :談我們為什麼儲藏大量種子

Jonathan Drori: Why we're storing billions of seeds


All human life, all life, depends on plants. Let me try to convince you of that in a few seconds. Just think for a moment. It doesn't matter whether you live in a small African village, or you live in a big city, everything comes back to plants in the end. Whether it's for the food, the medicine, the fuel, the construction, the clothing, all the obvious things, or whether it's for the spiritual and recreational things that matter to us so much, or whether it's soil formation, or the effect on the atmosphere, or primary production. Damnit, even the books here are made out of plants. All these things, they come back to plants. And without them we wouldn't be here.


Now plants are under threat. They're under threat because of changing climate. And they are also under threat because they are sharing a planet with people like us. And people like us want to do things that destroy plants, and their habitats. And whether that's because of food production or because of the introduction of alien plants into places that they really oughtn't be, or because of habitats being used for other purposes, all these things are meaning that plants have to adapt, or die, or move. And plants sometimes find it rather difficult to move because there might be cities and other things in the way.


So if all human life depends on plants, doesn't it make sense that perhaps we should try to save them? I think it does. And I want to tell you about a project to save plants. And the way that you save plants is by storing seeds. Because seeds, in all their diverse glory, are plants' futures. All the genetic information for future generations of plants are held in seeds. So here is the building. It looks rather unassuming really. But it goes down below ground many stories. And it's the largest seed bank in the world. It exists not only in southern England, but distributed around the world. I'll come to that. This is a nuclear-proof facility. God forbid that it should have to withstand that.


So if you're going to build a seed bank, you have to decide what you're going to store in it. Right? And we decided that what we want to store first of all, are the species that are most under threat. And those are they dry land species. So first of all we did deals with 50 different countries. It means negotiating with heads of state, and secretaries of state in 50 countries to sign treaties. We have 120 partner institutions all over the world, in all those countries colored orange. People come from all over the world to learn. And then they go away and plan exactly how they're going to collect these seeds. They have thousands of people all over the world tagging places where those plants are said to exist. They search for them. They find them in flower. And they go back when their seeds have arrived. And they collect the seeds. All over the world.


The seeds -- some of if is very untechnical. You kind of shovel them all in to bags and dry them off. You label them. You do some high-tech things here and there. Some low-tech things here and there. And the main thing is that you have to dry them very carefully, at low temperature. And then you have to store them at about minus 20 degrees C -- that's minus four Fahrenheit, I think -- with a very critically low moisture content. And these seeds will be able to germinate, we believe, with many of the species, in thousands of years, and certainly in hundreds of years.


It's no good storing the seeds if you don't know they're still viable. So every 10 years we do germination tests on every sample of seeds that we have. And this is a distributed network. So all around the world people are doing the same thing. And that enables us to develop germination protocols. That means that we know the right combination of heat and cold and the cycles that you have to get to make the seed germinate. And that is very useful information. And then we grow these things, And we tell people, back in the countries where these seeds have come from, "Look, actually we're not just storing this to get the seeds later, but we can give you this information about how to germinate these difficult plants." And that's already happening.


So where have we got to? I am pleased to unveil that our three billionth seed, that's three thousand millionth seed, is now stored. 10 percent of all plant species on the planet. 24 thousand species are safe. 30 thousand species, if we get the funding, by next year. 25 percent of all the world's plants, by 2020. These are not just crop plants, as you might have seen stored in Svalbard in Norway. Fantastic work there. This is at least 100 times bigger. We have thousands of collections that have been sent out all over the world. Drought-tolerant forest species sent to Pakistan and Egypt. Especially photosynthetic-efficient plants come here to the United States. Salt-tolerant pasture species sent to Australia. The list goes on and on.


These seeds are used for restoration. So in habitats that have already been damaged, like the tall grass prairie, here in the USA, or in mined land in various countries, restoration is already happening because of these species. And because of this collection. Some of these plants, like the ones on the bottom to the left of your screen, they are down to the last few remaining members. The one where the guy is collecting seeds there on the truck, that is down to about 30 last remaining trees. Fantastically useful plant, both for protein and for medicine.


We have training going on in China, in the USA, and many other countries. How much does it cost? 2,800 dollars per species is the average. I think that's cheap, at the price. And that gets you all the scientific data that goes with it. The future research is "How can we find the genetic and molecular markers, for the viability of seeds, without having to plant them every 10 years?" And we're almost there. Thank you very much. (Applause)




Jonathan Drori談我們為什麼儲藏大量種子

所有的人類生命，所有的生命都依靠植物，我接下來很快會讓大家信服。想一想，無論住在非洲小村落或者大城市，一切最後都要求索於植物。無論是食物、藥物、燃料、建築、衣服，所有顯而易見的東西，或是在精神還是娛樂上，都對我們很重要的東西，不管是泥土形成，大氣層作用，還是初級生產。該死，連這裏的書都是用植物做的。所有這些東西都求索於植物，沒有植物就沒有我們。


現在植物正受到威脅因為氣候變化，還因為它們和我們這些人住在同一個星球，而我們這些人做的，是一些損害植物及其棲息地的事。無論是因為食物生產，因為把一些外來植物引入了不該引入的地方，還是因為把植物棲息地移作他用。所有這些都意味著植物要適應死亡，或者移居。有些時候植物很難移居，因為隔著城市或者其他東西。


因此，如果所有人類生活依賴植物，我們就應該盡力拯救它們，不是嗎？我想是的。我想告訴大家一個拯救植物的計畫，拯救植物的方式就是儲藏種子。因為在各種繁衍中，種子是植物的未來，植物後代的所有基因資訊都在種子裏。就在這幢樓，看起來一點都不張揚，但它地下有很多層，這是世界上最大的種子銀行。不僅在英格蘭南部有，還分佈在全世界，我待會就會說到。這是一處抗核建築，上帝保佑它不用遭受且頂得住核威脅。



如果你要建種子銀行，你要決定儲藏什麼種子，對嗎？我們決定首先要儲藏瀕臨滅絕的品種，就是那些乾地品種。所以我們首先和50個國家達成協定，就是和50個國家的首腦以及國務卿協商，簽定協議。我們在全世界有120個合作機構，就是那些標示為橙色的國家。來自世界各地的人要學習，然後回去計畫確切要怎樣收集這些種子。在全世界有數以千計的人在尋訪據說有那些植物存在的地區，他們在尋找那些植物，發現正在開花，當植物長了種子，他們就回去採擷，他們在全世界收集種子。


有些種子完全未經專門處理，你把它們鏟進袋子裡弄乾，貼上標籤。你在某些地方用高科技方法做，在某些地方用低科技方法做，重要的是要把種子弄乾，很小心地在低溫下弄乾，然後要儲存起來。大概在攝氏零下20度，我想就是華氏零下4度，環境濕度要非常低，這些種子將能夠發芽。我們相信，這許多種類的植物在數千年之後是能夠發芽的，至少在數百年後肯定可以。


如果你不清楚它能否能發芽，就不要儲存了。我們每十年會做發芽測試，我們對每個種子樣本都會進行測試。這是一個分散的網路，人們在世界不同地方做著相同的事。這讓我們建立了發芽的科學程式，這就是說，我們知道發芽所需的適當冷熱組合及必要的週期，這是很有用的資訊。我們種這些東西，告訴原產地那裏的人們，這些種子從哪裡來。「看，我們不僅把它儲存起來，然後獲得種子，還可以向你提供關於如何讓這些稀有植物發芽的資訊。」這一直在進行中。


那我們有什麼成果？很高興向大家展示我們第三十億粒種子，這是我們第三十億粒種子，現在被儲存起來。世界上所有植物種類的10%，共24,000種已經受到保護。如果我們獲得資助，明年會增加到三萬種，2020年達到世界上所有植物種類的25%，不僅是經濟作物。如果你看過挪威斯瓦爾巴特群島儲藏的種子就知道，那裏做得很好，新計劃的規模至少大100倍。我們有很多儲藏品送往世界各地，耐旱的森林品種送往巴基斯坦和埃及，光合作用特別強的植物送往美國，耐鹽性草原品種送往澳洲，還有很多很多。


這些植物用於修復，已經被破壞的棲息地，就像美國中西部大草原，或者其他國家已開採過的土地。因為有了這些植物種類，我們已經開始修復工作。因為有這些儲藏品，其中有些植物，像最下面那些到螢幕左邊那些，它們是最後僅存的幾粒。那人在貨車上收集的那個種子品種，現在就剩下最後三十棵樹了，非常有用的植物，對蛋白質和藥用的價值都很高。


我們在中國、美國和很多其他國家都有進行培訓，成本有多大？平均每個品種2,800美元，我覺得是便宜的，這讓你能得知所有它攜帶的科學資料。未來的研究是「我們如何找出種子生長能力的基因和分子標記，而不用每十年進行種植測試」。這個目標快實現了。謝謝。（掌聲）