Moscow, Russia – In favor of a few exclusive private homes, Europe is standing to lose it’s largest collection of fruits and berries, that is if the Russian court rules that the land is no longer considered a reserve and that it could be sold to property developers.

It’s like a textbook case of nature versus developers is it not?

The Pavlovsk experimental station near the Russian city of St Petersburg is home to the one of the largest seed bank in the world.  It is affiliated to the Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry and is home to thousands of varieties of plants and crops there are found nowhere else.  Current tally of it’s inventory registers about 320,000 samples of fruits and berries – 100 varieties each of gooseberries, raspberries and cherries, and more than 1,000 varieties of strawberries. About 90% of the varieties of crops there are unique.

Agricultural scientist Nikolai Vavilov built the seed bank in 1926, to preserve biodiversity and enable the breeding of new crop varieties.

“The collection is a source of genes to develop many new varieties of fruits and berries, and it is also a huge cultural heritage,” said Sergey Alexanian, head of the Department of International Relations at the Vavilov Institute.

Sources indicate that the economy is the reason for the Russian government in considering such a deal.  While relocation has been suggested to save the seed bank,  experts like Cary Dr Fowler of the Global Crop Diversity Trust say that it’s impossible.  “The Pavlovsk collection is unlike other seed banks around the world, where seeds are preserved by being dried and frozen” he said. “The crops in the Russian experimental station are almost exclusively crops that have to be conserved them in the field, as living specimens.”

The court is yet to decide the fate of the Pavlovsk experimental station and a second, much bigger, site.

source BBC

Posted by sylv3rblade on Wednesday, 01 Sep 2010 02:05:AM. Filed under Europe, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry