The History of Seed Banks

Lead researcher:Helen Anne Curry
Research staff: Sara Peres, postdoctoral research assistant, 2016–2017

This project investigates the history of seed banking as a global conservation practice and human health imperative. It was launched in 2016 with support from a Wellcome Trust Seed Award and continues as a strand of 'From Collection to Cultivation.'

Since the 1960s, governments, international organizations, NGOs, and private philanthropies have invested heavily in the conservation of genetic diversity in plant species, especially agricultural crops. The most visible marker of this investment has been the proliferation of 'seed banks,' institutions dedicated to the collection and preservation of seeds. These serve as permanent repositories for the world's vast genetic diversity in food crops and, increasingly, its diversity in wild plants as well.

This project seeks to understand: how the genetic diversity of plant species came to be seen as a critical but imperilled resource essential to human survival; how seed banks came to be seen as the obvious solution to the threat of losing such diversity; and the consequences of these ideas—and the institutions and activities they inspired—for global food security and human wellbeing in the present.

Publications:

• Helen Anne Curry and Sabina Leonelli, “Crop Descriptors and the Forging of ‘System-Wide’ Research in CGIAR,” in Helen Anne Curry and Timothy Lorek, eds., Agricultural Science as International Development: Historical Perspectives on the CGIAR Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024): 234–258.
• Helen Anne Curry, 'A Short History of Seed Keeping', in Jeannie Whayne, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Agricultural History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024): 58–75.
• Helen Anne Curry, 'Diversifying Description: Sweet Potato Science and International Agricultural Research after the Green Revolution', Agricultural History 97, no. 3 (2023): 414–447.
• Helen Anne Curry, 'Data, Duplication, and Decentralisation: Gene Bank Management in the 1980s and 1990s', in Sabina Leonelli and Hugh Williamson, eds., Towards Responsible Plant Data Linkage: Global Challenges for Food Security and Governance (Cham: Springer, 2022): 163–182.
• Helen Anne Curry, 'The History of Seed Banks and the Hazards of Backup', Social Studies of Science 52, no. 5 (2022): 664–688.
• Helen Anne Curry, ed., 'The Collection and Conservation of Plant Genetic Resources, Past and Present', Special Issue of Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment, 41, no. 2 (2019):

  • Xan Chacko, 'Creative Practices of Care: The Subjectivity, Agency and Affective Labour of Preparing Seeds for Long-term Banking,'Culture, Agriculture, Food, and Environment 41, no. 2 (2019): 97–106.

  • Helen Anne Curry, 'Gene Banks, Seed Libraries, and Vegetable Sanctuaries: The Cultivation and Conservation of Heritage Vegetables in Britain, 1970–1985,' Culture, Agriculture, Food, and Environment 41, no. 2 (2019): 87–96.

  • Kay Lewis-Jones, '"The first step is to bring it into our hands": wild seed conservation, the stewardship of species survival and gardening the Anthropocene at the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership,'Culture, Agriculture, Food, and Environment 41, no. 2 (2019): 107–116.

  • Sara Peres, 'Seed Banking as Cryopower: A Cryopolitical Account of the Work of the International Board of Plant Genetic Resources, 1973–1984,'Culture, Agriculture, Food, and Environment 41, no. 2 (2019): 76–86.

• Helen Anne Curry, 'From Bean Collection to Seed Bank: Transformations in Heirloom Vegetable Conservation, 1970–1985', BJHS Themes 4 (2019): 149–167.
• Helen Anne Curry, 'From Working Collections to the World Germplasm Project: Agricultural Modernization and Genetic Conservation at the Rockefeller Foundation', History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences39, no. 5 (June 2017).