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Re-organizing the Seed Library Collection

Aileen Verdun

One of the core elements to Seeds of Diversity's work is the Seed Library, the complex storage system for the hundreds of types of seeds that have been gifted, purchased and grown out over the many years of Seeds of Diversity's work. This system is crucial to the work of preserving and cultivating heirloom and endangered seeds, and like any good system, it requires maintenance in order to work optimally. This year, the Seed Library team dedicated time and resources to the complete reorganization of the library and its collections in order to support the ongoing work of Seeds of Diversity for years to come.

Early in 2022, the Seed Library team worked to develop a process for reorganizing the massive amount of seeds in the Seed Library. As the team discussed what needed to happen in this reorganization, it became clear that the priorities were threefold: first, to run germination tests on priority seed in order to determine viability and subsequently remove from the library nonviable seed; second, to ensure that what is physically in the library is accurately reflected in the library database; and third, to reduce the amount of space the collections take up by ensuring the seed packets were stored efficiently. A process was developed in order to accomplish these goals and by March, the Permanent Collection, the seeds that are dehydrated and frozen for long-term preservation, had been completely reorganized and optimized such that it takes up half of the space it once did. The Temporary Collection, seeds that are more readily accessible for grow-outs, testing, or distribution, is still in the process of being organized and will be done by the end of the year, just in time for new seeds to arrive from the many growers across Canada.

Completing this maintenance on the Seed Library provides a number of benefits to the work done at Seeds of Diversity. Crucially, testing priority seed and ensuring that the database accurately reflects the physical contents of the library gives the clearest possible picture of which seeds need to be grown-out most urgently. The reorganization of the Permanent Collection informed many of the seeds that were sent for grow-out this year, and will also inform the seeds that are sent next year. Furthermore, removing nonviable seeds and condensing these collections such that they take up less space allows for room to grow in the future.

Maintenance is perhaps not the most exciting project to undertake at first glance, but the results of the work that is well underway in the Seed Library is very exciting. We are thrilled to have a clearer picture of the seeds that are in our care, and to have so much more space to bring in new and updated seed in the years to come.

In future articles, we'll get into the details of how we store the seeds, how we test for germination, and how we keep track of over 7000 separate samples.

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