Seedbank

A seedbank stores seeds as a source for planting in case seed reserves elsewhere are destroyed. It is a type of gene bank. The seeds stored may be food crops, or those of rare species to protectbiodiversity. The reasons for storing seeds may be varied. In the case of food crops, many useful plants that were developed over centuries are now no longer used for commercial agricultural production and are becoming rare. Storing seeds also guards against catastrophic events like natural disasters, outbreaks of disease, or war.

Optimal storage conditions:

Seeds are dried to a moisture content of less than 5%. The seeds are then stored in freezers at -18C or below. Because seed (DNA) degrades with time, the seeds need to be periodically replanted and fresh seeds collected for another round of long-term storage.

Seed dormancy:
Orthodox seeds can stay dormant for decades in a cool and dry environment, with little damage to their DNA; they remain viable and are easily stored in seedbanks. By contrast, recalcitrant seeds are damaged by dryness and subzero temperature, and so must be continuously replanted to replenish seed stocks. Examples are the seeds of cocoa and rubber.

Optimal storage conditions:

Seeds are dried to a moisture content of less than 5%. The seeds are then stored in freezers at -18C or below. Because seed (DNA) degrades with time, the seeds need to be periodically replanted and fresh seeds collected for another round of long-term storage. Seeds may be viable for hundreds and even thousands of years. The oldest carbon-14-dated seed that has grown into a viable plant was a Judean date palm seed about 2,000 years old, recovered from excavations at Herod the Great's palace in Israel. Recently (February 2012) Russian scientist announced they had regenerated a narrow leaf campion (Silene stenophylla) from a 32,000 year old seed. The seed was found in a burrow 124 feet under Siberian permafrost along with 800,000 other seeds. Seed tissue was grown in test tubesuntil it could be transplanted to soil. This shows how long DNA can be viable in the proper conditions There are about 6 million accessions, or samples of a particular population, stored as seeds in about 1,300 genebanks throughout the world as of 2006. This amount represents a small fraction of the world's biodiversity, and many regions of the world have not been fully explored.

Seed dispersal pattern of local population

Types of dispersal:
At some time during its life, an organism, whether animal or plant, moves, or is moved, so that it or its offspring do not die exactly where they were born. Such movement is called dispersal. Some organisms are motile throughout their lives, but others are adapted to move or be moved at precise, limited phases of their life cycles. This is commonly called the dispersive phase of the life cycle. The strategies of organisms' entire life cycles often are predicated on the nature and circumstances of their dispersive phases. In general there are two basic types of dispersal:

Density independent dispersal

Organisms have evolved adaptations for dispersal that take advantage of various forms of kinetic energy occurring naturally in the environment. This is referred to as density independent or passive dispersal and operates on many groups of organisms (some invertebrates, fish, insects and sessileorganisms such as plants) that depend on animal vectors, wind, gravity or current for dispersal.

Density dependent dispersal

Density dependent or active dispersal for many animals largely depends on factors such as local population size, resource competition, habitatquality, and habitat size. Due to population density, dispersal may relieve pressure for resources in an ecosystem, and competition for these resources may be a selection factor for dispersal mechanisms. Dispersal of organisms is a critical process for understanding both geographic isolation in evolution through gene flow and the broad patterns of current geographic distributions (biogeography).

Plant dispersal:
Seed dispersal is the movement or transport of seeds away from the parent plant. Plants have limited mobility and consequently rely upon a variety of dispersal vectors to transport their propagules, including both abiotic and biotic vectors. Seeds can be dispersed away from the parent plant individually or collectively, as well as dispersed in both space and time here are five main modes of seed dispersal: gravity, wind, ballistic, water and by animals.

Animal dispersal :
There are numerous animal forms that are nonmotile, such as sponges, bryozoans, tunicates, sea anemones, corals, and oysters. In common, they are all either marine or aquatic. The majority of all animals are motile. Although motile animals can, in theory, disperse themselves by their spontaneous and independent locomotive powers, a great many species utilize the existing kinetic energies in the environment, resulting in passive movement. Dispersal by water currents is especially associated with the physically small inhabitants of marine waters known as zooplankton.