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Welcome into our seed lab!

Date: 2017.10.11

Collect seeds and preserve them for the future – how hard can it be? Actually, it can be quite advanced. Join us for a visit in the NordGen Seed Laboratory!

The beans rattle when they are gently pushed down on the scales to be weighed. Seed technician Annelie Thornberg is surrounded by odd tools, screens with long data lists and small silver bags.

– The beans are a bit too big to fit in the ordinary compartment. I’ll have to use this one instead, she says and continues the rattling.

The inconspisuous yellow-green beans have a dented shape which can be associated to early spring and moist soil. The beans have been grown in the NordGen gardens during the summer.

Annelie Thornberg weighs the beans.

The weight noted is used to determine the amount of seeds.

Johan Axelsson is responsible for the NordGen seed laboratory.

Each year NordGen grows between 60 and 70 plant variations. This is done to assure that there are enough seeds in layer, to categorize and evaluate the plants and to make sure that the seeds kept are of good quality.

– Roughly every tenth year we are to perform a so-called germination test on each seed bag we keep in our freezers, Johan Axelsson, responsible for the seed laboratory, says.

And it’s quite a few bags that are to be tested. Only in Alnarp NordGen keep more than 36 000 different accessions. Accessions is a word widely used in the world of gene banks. It means seed sample. Apart from Alnarp, NordGen also keep accessions i a back-up layer in Årslev, Denmark and in the Global Seed Vault at Svalbard.

Peas with tails

In a corner near the window in the seed laboratory, plastic boxes contain white paper rolls packed in plastic bags. From some of the bags, green sprouts stick up. Annelie Thornberg takes up one of the bags and unrolls the white paper.

–Look, these have already started to germinate, she says and points to a pea with a small, white tail.

In sealed plastic bags the seeds are out to germinate.

Annelie unfolds the moist paper tissue and can note that the peas are growing nicely.

This accession of peas has been donated by the now terminated Weibullsholms plant breeding institute.

To perform germination tests is important. It is needed for controlling that each accession is still of good quality but also to investigate that each sample actually contains the right species and variation. But it is a work both costly and time consuming.

In 2015 NordGen was granted funding from the Danish NaturErhvervstyrelsen, today known as Landbrugs-og Fiskeristyrelsen. The funding was granted for three years, with the purpose of catching up on germination tests on 5 000 accessions that hadn’t been conducted due to a lack of resources.

Before 2015 NordGen conducted about 3 000 germination tests each year. But with the contribution from NaturErhvervstyrelsen another person could work in the seed lab. That lead to the fact that NordGen during last year alone could conduct germination tests on 5 100 different accessions.

– Thanks to this money we have now managed to perform all the germination tests which we behind with. So now we’re in phase again, Johan Axelsson says.

From garden to freezer

Accessions enters the seed laboratory at NordGen in mainly two different ways; from donors (for example researchers or commercial breeders) and from our own cultivations. At first the seeds are put in the drying room, a room with very low air moisture. Here the seeds are kept for at least three months until they have a humidity content at about 7%.

When the accessions have been dried, they are weighed and packaged in bags made of laminated layers of plastic and aluminium. It is actually the same kind of bags used by the military for keeping food dry.

When it’s time to conduct germination tests one needs to know a little bit about which conditions each accession needs to grow. Some needs a period of low temperatures, others need higher temperatures and are put in the incubations cabin.

– In here we can control both the light and the temperature to give each plant variation the very best conditions, Johan Axelsson says.

All the seed samples are sealed tightly in plastic bags to preserve a high humidity.

This accession is collected in Oslo Old Town. It’s a plant called Black horehound.

– Right now it’s about 20 degrees in the incubation cabin, Johan Axelsson says.

But it isn’t only light and temperature that matters. As the inspired home gardener surely is aware of, some plants need a little bit of extra love to grow.

–Some seeds need to soak in water for a few days, others we need to use sand paper on, Annelie Thornberg says.

To gather and keep this information, about which conditions each plant needs to grow, is crucial – not least since the employees of NordGen is only allowed to work here for eight years. It is a rule that applies to all employees within the Nordic Cooperation.

When the germination tests have been made, at least 75% of the seeds must be alive. Otherwise, the plant needs to be propagated in the fields. Now during the autumn, NordGen senior scientists are planning what to grow in the fields next summer.