A ‘seed vault’ in southern New South Wales is playing a vital role in protecting the nation’s agricultural heritage. It is preserving seeds and grains for up to 100 years, and its work is gaining international attention.
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00:00After years of safekeeping, thousands of rice species are finally getting their forever
00:07home.
00:08We hold rice varieties in there that are unique and we know are held nowhere else in the world.
00:13Almost all of Australia's rice is grown in southern NSW.
00:17And this seed vault in Wagga Wagga holds the full diversity of the nation's rice.
00:22They were the first rice varieties grown commercially here in NSW.
00:27The vault is set up to protect and store seeds for 100 years and the collection contains
00:32varieties from around the world.
00:35We were contacted by rice breeders from Hungary who were looking for varieties lost after
00:42the collapse of the Soviet Union.
00:43We were able to assure them that yes, we did have their national heritage.
00:50Many of the varieties here predate the introduction of high yielding crop varieties, what's known
00:55as the green revolution.
00:56And there's hope they can help solve modern issues affecting the agriculture industry.
01:01They might be genes that help rice adapt to climate change.
01:05The vault is set up to be like a library, so seeds can be grown, borrowed, used and
01:10replenished.
01:11You don't want to have a library where the books sit on the shelf.
01:14For those at the Australian Plant Bank in Sydney South, saving seeds is an investment.
01:20Our valuable things are our seeds, so we deposit them in our seed bank and then we withdraw
01:25them when we need to for the future.
01:27The nearby herbarium has collected more than a million plant specimens, helping connect
01:32visitors with flora preservation.
01:35We can really kind of get excited about saving a rare species of animal, but we sort of forget
01:41that a rare species of plant can be just as exciting.
01:44For those building the Wagga Wagga Vault, its importance became more clear over time.
01:50This is 1910 rice heritage, like this is sleepless nights, worrying to make sure it
01:57all works.
01:58It's history, what more could you want to be a part of, it's just bread.
02:02A long past, and hopefully future, for these tiny grains of rice.