Question

Seed hunting is an increasingly serious business. Some seek seeds for profit and

others collect to conserve. Among the pioneers of this botanical treasure hunt was John

Tradescant, an English royal gardener who brought back plants and seeds from his journeys

abroad in the early 1600s. Later, the English botanist Sir Joseph Banks — who was the first

director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and travelled with Captain James Cook on his

voyages near the end of the 18th century — was so driven to expand his collections that he

sent botanists around the world at his own expense.

Those days of exploration and discovery may be over, but they have been replaced by

a pressing need to preserve our natural history for the future. This modern mission drives Dr

Michiel van Slageren and other seed hunters who work at the Millennium Seed Bank, an

international conservation project that aims to protect the world's most endangered wild plant

species. The group's headquarters are in the West Sussex countryside. Within its underground

vaults are 260 million dried seeds from 122 countries, all stored at -20 Celsius to survive for

centuries. Overseen by the Royal Botanic Gardens, the Millennium Seed Bank is the world's

largest wild-plant depository. It aims to collect 24,000 species by 2010. The reason is simple:

an estimated 25 per cent of the world's plants are on the verge of extinction and may vanish

within 50 years. Experts predict that during the next 50 years a further one billion hectares of

wilderness will be converted to farmland in developing countries alone.

The Millennium Seed Bank aims to ensure that even if a plant becomes extinct in the

wild, it won't be lost forever. There are about 1,470 seed banks scattered around the globe,

with a combined total of 5.4 million samples.

1) Who were the pioneers of seed hunting? (2 marks)

2) Why is seed hunting undertaken in modern times? (2 marks)

3) What does Millennium Seed Bank’s vaults contain? (2 marks)

4) The Millennium Seed Bank is the world's largest wild-plant depository. (True/ False)

(1 mark)

5) What does the Millennium Seed Bank aim to collect? Why? (3 marks​)

Answer 1

Answer:

there are so many millennium banks are there

so we can't answer the question