Gene Banks, Seed Libraries, and Vegetable Sanctuaries: The Cultivation and Conservation of Heritage Vegetables in Britain, 1970–1985

Individual seed saving and exchange are considered important components of contemporary efforts to conserve crop genetic diversity, which ramify at local, regional, and global scales. Yet the very fact that the contributions of these activities to conservation need to be made explicit by seed savers and those who study them indicates that the practices of seed saving and exchange may not immediately be recognized as conservation-oriented activities. This article investigates why and how individual seed saving came to be aligned with a broader conservation agenda in Britain through an historical examination of the promotion of seed saving by the Henry Doubleday Research Association (HDRA) in the 1970s and 1980s. It demonstrates how several HDRA initiatives that aimed to preserve vegetable diversity also re-inscribed British gardeners' ordinary labor as conservation work. This historical study complements sociological and ethnographic studies, highlighting the role of a prominent organization in creating pathways for individuals to engage in local, national, and international conservation through seed saving. It also serves as a reminder that the connections between these activities had to be made explicit—that is, that there was (and is) work involved in connecting individual acts of seed saving to conservation outcomes at different scales

Introduction: The Collection and Conservation of Plant Genetic Resources, Past and Present

The articles in this special issue contribute to our understanding of the historical emergences (Curry, Peres) and present-day functionings (Chacko, Jones) of various modes of conserving plant genetic diversity in seed banks. Exploring both crop plant and wild species conservation at different times and scales, the papers examine how various actors have articulated their role in stewarding plant life for the future as seeds, whether vegetable gardeners, seed bank curators and volunteers, restoration ecologists, or standard-setting agencies. They reveal seed banking and its corollary, seed saving, as a response to uncertainty, one which does not resolve this condition but instead generates new ambiguities and new uncertainties.Wellcome Trust 109337/Z/15/