The Millennium Seed Bank: 25 Years of Impact and Inspiration
27 October 2025
As the Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) marks its 25th anniversary, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, is sharing its remarkable story with the world – and inspiring a new wave of awareness about the power of seeds.
Kew’s new podcast, Unearthed: The Need for Seeds, launches this celebration by taking listeners behind the scenes. The first episode features His Majesty King Charles III, Kew Ambassador Cate Blanchett, and Senior Research Leader Dr Elinor Breman. They reflect on the MSB’s beginnings, its progress over the past quarter century, and its vital role in securing the future of plant diversity on Earth. Their conversation highlights how seeds connect conservation, climate action and human wellbeing – a theme close to His Majesty’s heart and central to Kew’s mission.
The Economist has also turned the spotlight on Kew in a recent feature on seed conservation focusing on Madagascar. In the article, Kew’s Dr Charlotte Lusty describes seed banks as “libraries of life,” where samples are routinely “checked out” to help restore ecosystems and safeguard food security. She recalls how seeds from the Millennium Seed Bank helped reintroduce a rare Australian pea nearly lost to wildfires – one of many examples of how stored seeds are used to rebuild resilience.
Among the partnerships featured is the Crop Wild Relatives Project, managed by the Crop Trust with Kew and implemented with national and international genebanks and breeding programs worldwide. Over ten years, the project trained collectors across 25 countries and secured more than 3,600 samples of the wild relatives of major food crops. These seeds have since been used to breed new, climate-resilient varieties, including ‘Jabal’ durum wheat recently released in Morocco. This drought-tolerant variety, as The Economist explains, “takes traits from goatgrass, a wild wheat collected from the dry Syrian plateaus.”
Together, the podcast and The Economist feature show that seed conservation is not just preserving life in cold storage, but using it to improve landscapes, livelihoods and nutrition.
As a long-standing partner of Kew, the Crop Trust applauds its leadership in advancing global awareness of the value of seeds, seed banks and international collaboration. His Majesty King Charles III, Patron of the Crop Trust, continues to lend his enduring support to this shared mission – underscoring that safeguarding crop diversity today is essential to people, prosperity and our planet.
Category: For The Press