by Kaleigh Rogers
from
MotherBoard Website are one of the many species that produce seeds that can't be dried. Image: PublicDomainPictures.net
published Friday in Nature Plants showed that 36 percent of critically endangered plants produce recalcitrant seeds,
which can't be
preserved.
Unless we can find other preservation techniques, once these plants, which include,
...are gone, they're gone, according to a new study (Seed Banking not an Option for many Threatened Plants) published Friday in Nature Plants.
Recalcitrant seeds need to keep their water content in order to grow.
Think of an avocado:
Though it doesn't always get as much attention as the threats facing animals, plant diversity across the globe is also facing declines, with species being lost at an unprecedented rate. In an effort to combat the rapid loss of so many plants, conservationists set goals back in 2002 for things they could achieve to help preserve more plants.
One of these goals was to
preserve 75 percent of threatened plant species ex-situ (as in,
somewhere other than their native habitat) by 2020.
In addition to the critical species that can't be preserved in this way, researchers found that,
...produce recalcitrant
seeds.
As such, the researchers urged for more rapid development of new techniques so that we don't risk losing more than a third of our most at-risk species.
And they emphasized the need to protect the living species' habitats while we still have them.
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