Format: ORAL

Andreas Ensslin1, Adelaide Clemente2, Elke Zippel3, Udayangani Liu4, Peter Glasnovic5, Sandrine Godefroid6

1 Conservatory and Botanic Garden of the City of Geneva, Switzerland 2 University of Lisbon, Portugal 3 Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem, Germany 4 Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, United Kingdom 5 University of Primorska, Slovenia 6 Meise Botanic Garden, Belgium

Conserving orthodox seeds of wild plants through seed banking (at 15% RH and -20C) has become a valuable tool in safeguarding threatened populations and species, supporting conservation interventions such as plant translocations, but also in conserving genetic resources for plant breeding and food security. Despite over 90% of the European flora is likely to possess bankable seeds, there is no general assessment of how many taxa are secured in seed banks, where the gaps are and whether the countries met the objectives of global conservation initiatives such as the GSPC (i.e., target 8: 75% of threatened plants conserved ex situ). Within the framework of the COST Action ConservePlants (CA18201), a European-wide survey on seed bank collections was launched to gain an overview over the current state of ex situ conservation of wild plant taxa in seed banks across Europe. After a challenging process of taxonomic harmonization, we identified over 13000 taxa conserved in 109 institutions from 29 countries across Europe and the Middle East. We mapped the taxonomic names and the original provenance of seed lots against the respective national red lists to identify the coverage met by each country concerning the GSPC target 8. We reveal gaps in species conservation and point out future directions on how to meet global conservation targets. Our study demonstrates the importance of collaborative approach for seed banking to support safeguarding threatened plants across Europe but also highlights that its potential has not at all been fully exploited yet.