Improvements to the Native Seeds/SEARCH Collections: Current Efforts and Future Goals

摘要

Native Seeds/SEARCH is tasked with two major endeavors: conserving and documenting the region's agricultural diversity and associated knowledge, and making this diversity and knowledge accessible to indigenous communities, farmers, gardeners, educators, researchers, and the general public. Through our work we aim to improve access to healthy and culturally-relevant foods, to provide farmers and gardeners with the materials and support they need to build a robust regional food system, and to maintainthe region's crop varieties in situ and ex situ so that they can contribute their unique adaptations to the agricultural systems of an increasingly challenging future. The seeds in our collection are the basic but essential tools that make all of this possible.