Millennium Seed Bank Partnership
plant conservation programme and organization
The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership (MSBP or MSB), formerly known as the Millennium Seed Bank Project, is the largest ex situ plant conservation programme in the world, coordinated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK. After being awarded a Millennium Commission grant in 1995, the project commenced in 1996, and is now housed in the Wellcome Trust Millennium Building situated in the grounds of Wakehurst Place, West Sussex. Its purpose is to provide an "insurance policy" against the extinction of plants in the wild by storing seeds for future use. The storage facilities consist of large underground frozen vaults preserving the world's largest wild-plant seedbank or collection of seeds from wild species. The project had been started by Dr Peter Thompson and run by Paul Smith after the departure of Roger Smith. Roger Smith was awarded the OBE in 2000 in the Queen's New Year Honours for services to the Project.
Project
In collaboration with other biodiversity projects around the world, expeditions are sent to collect seeds from dryland plants. Where possible, collections are kept in the country of origin with duplicates being sent to the Millennium Seed Bank Project for storage. Major partnerships exist on all the continents, enabling the countries involved to meet international objectives such as the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation and the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations Environment Programme.
The seed bank at Kew has gone through many iterations. The Kew Seed Bank facility, set up by Peter Thompson in 1980, preceded the MSBP and was headed by Roger Smith from 1980 to 2005.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Millennium Seed Bank Partnership” is plant conservation programme and organization. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Millennium, Seed and Bank, not as a finished interpretation.
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Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2603353. VIAF identifies the subject as 218132665. The Library of Congress control number is nb2012018267. Authority coordinates are 51.069, -0.090. 1 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1995, 1996, 2000 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Millennium Seed Bank Partnership” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.