The Millennium Seed Bank: building partnerships in arid regions for the conservation of wild species

The Millennium Seed Bank Project is a large, international conservation project. Most of the project will focus—in collaboration with many dryland countries—on the much-neglected need for conservation of wild species in the (semi-) arid regions of the world. Its principal aim is to help safeguard 24, 000 species of dryland plants—10% of the worldʹs flora—against extinction. A second aim is, equally through ex-situ conservation, to secure the future of almost all of the U.K.ʹs native flowering plants. For the project, a new building has been constructed at Wakehurst Place in Sussex, part of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. After opening in late 2000, it will house the Seed Bank and be a world resource for seed conservation, research and education.