Share a Tiny Space of Your Freezer to Increase Resilience of Ex-situ Seed Conservation
Andrea Vitaletti

TL;DR
This paper proposes a decentralized seed storage system using domestic freezers and blockchain technology to enhance seed diversity preservation and resilience against genetic erosion.
Contribution
It introduces a novel distributed seed storage concept leveraging home freezers and blockchain, with a proof-of-concept demonstrating feasibility and key technical challenges.
Findings
Proof-of-concept confirms feasibility of distributed seed storage
Blockchain lottery incentivizes user participation
Identifies technical challenges for full implementation
Abstract
More than 95% of the crop genetic erosion articles analyzed in [9] reported changes in diversity, with nearly 80% providing evidence of loss. The lack of diversity presents a severe risk to the security of global food systems. Without seed diversity, it is difficult for plants to adapt to pests, diseases, and changing climate conditions. Genebanks, such as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, are valuable initiatives to preserve seed diversity in a single secure and safe place. However, according to our analysis of the data available in the Seed Portal, the redundancy for some species might be limited, posing a potential threat to their future availability. Interestingly, the conditions to properly store seeds in genebanks, are the ones available in the freezers of our homes. This paper lays out a vision for Distributed Seed Storage relying on a peer-to-peer infrastructure of domestic…
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Taxonomy
TopicsPlant tissue culture and regeneration · Turfgrass Adaptation and Management
