Seeds collections from Cyprus arrived to the Millennium Seed Bank
Last week the first batch with seed collections, after the second seed collecting season of the project, have arrived to the Millennium Seed Bank. The partners from The Agricultural Research Institute Nicosia have sent 44 high quality seed collections. Most of them belong to endemic and threatened plant species like Arabis purpurea, Onobrychis venosa, Astragalus cyprius, Bupleurum sintenenisii, Silene laevigata, Allium cupani subsp. cyprium, Ranunculus kykkoensis or Gypsophila linearifolia.
The seeds were collected by the staff of the Cyprus Forest Association and few of them were collected by all the project partners during the joint field trip we did in July. The seeds have been cleaned and curated by the staff from The Agricultural Research Institute Nicosia.
During this second seed collecting season 406 collections from 329 species has been collected. Added to the species collected during the first year of the project represent 752 taxa. That means that we have achieved 83.5% of the project main goal.
We are looking forwards to receive the rest of the batches in the coming months.
Photo 1: Anna Pajdo from Conservation and Technology Section opening the batch with seed collections from Cyprus (Photo: W. Stuppy)
Photo 2: Seed collections from Cyprus (Photo: W. Stuppy)