Progress grows on seed vault project in Xiong'an

A major new facility designed to safeguard China's forest and grassland biodiversity has reached a key construction milestone in Xiong'an New Area, Hebei province.

The main structure of the National Facility Preservation Bank for Forestry and Grassland Germplasm Resources (Xiong'an) has been completed and is expected to begin operations in 2028. Described by researchers as a vast "insurance vault" for the nation's botanical future, the bank will store a wide range of plant genetic materials — from seeds and dormant buds to pollen, in-vitro plants and DNA.

"Think of it as a giant safe deposit box for forest and grass seeds," said Wang Jun, deputy director of the facility's operation center and a professor at Beijing Forestry University.

"If a plant species disappears from the wild due to climate change or pests and diseases, or other disasters, we can retrieve its suitable germplasm resources from the bank to restore it."

The Xiong'an bank is the central hub in a national preservation system made up of one main site and six branch banks. Co-built by the National Forestry and Grassland Administration and the Ministry of Education, and managed by Beijing Forestry University, it will coordinate the long-term conservation of key plant germplasms across the country.

Building the facility is no easy task, with the immense variety of plant life presenting the biggest challenge.

"We need to preserve as many species and germplasms as possible," Wang said. "But seeds can be as large as a ball or as fine as sand. Some plants don't even produce seeds or it's very difficult to collect their seeds," he said, adding that preservation must be in the form of dormant buds, DNA, or other suitable forms.

This diversity demanded an innovative design. The team has created specialized functional zones for different preservation methods, including low-temperature storage and DNA banks. Combined with intelligent greenhouses, it provides different preservation environments for a wider variety of forest and grass species, Wang said.

According to Wang, it is the first such vault in China to systematically collect germplasm resources based on geographical variations within species. He added that the geographical environment of the country is complex and diverse. Long-term adaptive evolution and selection pressures have led to a rich variety of geographical variations within species.

These germplasms exhibit different population genetic structures and ecological adaptabilities in different distribution areas. "A southern seed may struggle in the arid north. And plants that grow in high-altitude areas may encounter a survival crisis if they are planted in low-altitude regions," Wang said, adding that the Xiong'an bank will collect samples from different locations to capture this crucial genetic diversity.

This ensures the right seeds are available to rebuild healthy, resilient ecosystems anywhere in the country, he said.

"Big data and artificial intelligence will also be deeply applied," Wang said. They will help field collectors identify species and their unique variants accurately.

Upon completion, the bank's impact will be national. It will work with the six branches to collect, preserve and distribute vital germplasms. It will adopt intelligent sensing and automatic control preservation technologies to achieve full-process information management for the collection, preservation, distribution and utilization of germplasm resources, local media reported.

Pang Jingyi contributed to this story.