Singapore Botanic Gardens develops orchid seed bank

Neil Chatterjee, Reuters 20 Apr 09;

SINGAPORE, April 20 (Reuters) - Singapore's Botanic Gardens is developing an orchid seed bank and a section devoted to healing plants, as it looks to help conserve Southeast Asian species threatened by development and climate change. The seed bank, in its early stages and part of a global project, will keep alive dust-like orchid seeds by chilling them in liquid nitrogen.

"It's a race against time to document botanical treasures in this part of the world," said Chin See Chung, director of the Botanic Gardens, in an interview. "Habitat loss is going on at a rapid rate."

The Orchid Seed Stores for Sustainable Use project aims to collect and store seeds from orchid hot spots in Asia and Latin America, hoping to have 1,000 species stored by 2015. This is still a fraction of around 25,000 known orchid species.

There is a multi-billion-dollar global trade in orchids, the largest flowering plant species. Most commercially sold orchids are grown in nurseries but wild species are threatened by habitat loss and smuggling.

Singapore's Botanic Gardens pioneered orchid hybridisation in the 19th century. The tropical city-state exports over S$20 million worth ($13 million) of orchids a year, and in 2006 had around 15 percent of the world market for cut flowers.

The Gardens, 150 years old, started off focusing on commercial crops, leading to the spread of rubber across Southeast Asia, before switching to botanical research.

"The problem with research is it's slow and time consuming ... it's daunting," Chin said, adding there were not enough botanists, with biologists now going into more high-profile fields such as molecular biology and genetics.

Chin, who has a Ph.D from Yale in the traditional use of forests on the island of Borneo, saw future commercial growth potential for health food or medicinal plant products, as scientists look for cures to diseases such as cancer and AIDS.

But he said medicinal plants and information about them are at risk of being lost, leading the Gardens to start work on a "healing garden" that will hold 700 regional species by 2011.

Collectively, botanic gardens around the world hold around 100,000 plant species, a third of the total, Chin said.

But the financial crisis is threatening the Millenium Seed Bank Project, which aims to house all species to ensure future biodiversity [ID:nLT460399]. ($1 = 1.500 Singapore dollar) (Editing by Sugita Katyal)