I don't understand how someone could be so enthusiastic about a textile crop. Your overstatement caught my eye because it was an absolute. Absolutes are clear signs of deception, ignorance, or zeal.

BLESS EVERYONE WHO IS MINDING SACRED SEED. THE MYSTERY OF LIFE ITSELF.

Plants are fascinating organisms. They ere more sophisticated that most of people thinks.

Thanks and Good Luck to us all!

Great to see the Millennium Seed Bank Project get onto TEDS. :-)

The Irish Potato Famine happened because very few kinds of potatoes were grown and all of them were susceptible to the blight. We're narrowing down the plants we eat every year -- corn, rice, wheat; less kinds of each are grown every year because it's easier for BigAg to only do one or two grow-outs. We are more and more susceptible to famines. Genetic diversity of plants is very, very important. Turn your lawn into a garden and save your seed.

thank you!!!!

He mentions it in the video, Svalbard near Norway.

Thank you! I wish the efforts for storing animal genes was as ambitious as the seed bank.

Evolution takes much longer than our lives do, so preserving plants that are useful as resources to our civilizations, as well as those that are dying off due to our increasing use of natural resources (including land), is a good thing to do.

Cool, I hope they can store each specie of the wolrd seeds

I certainly like the idea of preserving my seed, any takers?!

i drink hemp seeds blended with water and i add hemp protein on top of that. its the world's best protein source.

I wonder if the have a bank of cannabis/HEMP seeds. That plant has to be in the top 100 most important plants on the planet.

This project is ingenious. I am shocked by some of the rude comments about this. Projects like this make the world a better place (not trying to be sentimental). It's definitely more important than 100 new Porsches or a 100 yard yacht...

I don't think they are deliberately rendered infertile, but a lot of plants sold commercially are hybrids or cultivars which can only be propagated through cuttings, tissue culture or grafting.

Why is it narrow? There are more uses for hemp but i kept the list narrowed down for obvious reasons.... =/

what was not mentioned are the many varieties of specie we have already lost, from apples to wheat. Common specie that have evolved properties that could be useful in changing environments.

This kind of stuff really appeals to me. Sorta goes along with talks like Aubrey de Grey's Methuselah Prize and the the Long Now Foundation.

An "ark" for seeds. Fantastic idea.

You can tell he just bought that shirt. DUDE IRON THAT SHIT!!

Yeah, same here.

Please tell me they saved some Hemp and Cannabis plants! :)

his shirt is nicely creased.

Como lo puedo traducir al español México

pretty narrow focus there BT but i'm sure they will

Why is Philippines not part if this? The country's plants needs conservation. If there will be one in the futurem I VOLUNTEER TO BE ONE OF THE SEED COLLECTORS.

"25% by 2020" when i first heard that 6 eyars ago i KNEW that they would run out of funding and it woult take longer than by 2020, 6 years down the line, and it seems they made sensible goals, and they might actually get 25% by then

Good vid, not very exciting but good to see some folks are taking a proactive stance in planning for the future. Currently people do not care what lives and what dies. "ohh it's just a weed, Ohh it's just one tree, I like this kind of corn Vs all these others," Thre was a previous TeD vidieo where a shashed and Burned forest was regrown. The people who were showcased in that Talk learned first hand how wrong they are. Untill we all think like this, We need seed banks.

I didn't realize seed was so important. Maybe I should quit spilling mine wantonly every night.

Smart fucking idea. All people should have their own personal stock of seeds for growing their own . Don't let Monsanto get any more of a monopoly over seeds then they already have. They're GMing everything.

Why go into extensive detail when a Google search is so easy and the Wikipedia page contains more info about gorse than you could hope to explain in a tiny KZread comment?

I'm not so sure. I've had a bit of experience propagating plants for a hobby, and there is certainly nothing unusual about creating infertile hybrids. Hybrids often produce higher yields and good quality fruit, but the plants are often infertile. Dedicated nurseries churn out huge quantities of artificially pollinated seedlings, or growers can produce their own hybrids if they know what they're doing.

That's happened with literally thousands of farmers all over US and Canada and now India as well. Monsanto is sueing out of business and then buying up small farms. Watch 'future of food', google vid or hulu.

Less than $3000 dollars to save a single species isn't a whole lot honestly. The US alone spends $millions a year to get single animal species alive. Sounds like a fantastic project honestly ^.^ Anyone know where to donate money? The thought that I could actually save a species myself is pretty damn tempting.

We shouldn't even have to do this. Is the sad thing.

Sussex...sounds like something you'd get arrested for in Texas.

"they spew" that is

store my seed!!

yeah man unfortunately this guy isn't as charismatic as other that do TED talks. But nonetheless - as you kinda said - this is much more important and honorable work than most scientific stuff.

I've gone to seed.

What? The man never said anything about releasing modified versions.

Participate in the crowd source seed saving program here: w ww.heirloomseedswap.c om

The russians started the first one back in the late 1800's. It's in Leningrad I think.

Hemp is the soulution to all of our problems....You can all thank DuPont and Hearst family for NO access

humorously enough, I dont care that possibly no one cares what I think. Im going to state my mind anyway for the simple reasoning that it either might be important to one person, which would make it worthwhile, or that what I'm saying strikes a chord with someone, and in an attempt to show me wrong someone does go out and corroborate evidence to figure out whether or not what I say is true. I don't really care, all I care about is being as accurate as possible

he's no christian bale

as if that beak isn't ugly enough. Man, I'd go down town and get a rat to gnaw that thing off.

and why should we panic when most people dont know what kind of harm they may cause? tell us first

cos lukn for all that information myself is inefficient use of my time, why shld i spend 2-3mins lukn 2 undastand something that some1 already knows/undastands and can synthesize into simple a 2-3line sentence 4 me? Besides, my earlier comment had two purposes, 1. to make conversation and 2. to help me undastand where mrgtr2 is coming from i.e. his answer reveals more abt hw he thinks...

wow, ur 30 years old, on youtube, no discernible career path (all taken from your youtube page btw) and u call me an ignorant cretin? I wish u all the best life has to offer dude. Lets just leave it at that

Search "Cannabis: The Scientific And Medical Evidence" in google it will bring up the 1998 house of lords science report.

"literally nothing" perhaps you would recant this?

★★★★★

i don't think we will need a "bank" of them. there are enough private citizens who keep them. ;-)

SEED OF JESUS

Freedom IS free, but this ain't freedom.

I HOPE THEY STORE HEMP SEEDS....HEMP for FUEL, FIBER, FOOD, MEDICINE, and PAPER!

lol 2012/jesus/poisoning people has no connection

It does in psyche of a conspiracy theorist :) You would be surprised how many superficial connections they can make up out of random events and topics. You should listen to their rants from time to time, it's sad and funny at the same time. Just wanted to make a joke about it, people didn't like it judging from thumbs down.

eh, you don't have much proof of that statement. It may seem nice to want to help out species that are dying out, but we seem extremely keen on killing off the species we deem bad and unnecessary, things like weeds and what have you. They're extremely successful plants, and we do all we can to kill them. To me we're just being ignorant of the path that evolution wants to take, and are trying to completely rewrite nature.