Along with 6 other participants I attended an all day workshop at the Ballarat Region Seed bank and Seeding Victoria office and nursery located at Sawpit Rd Creswick. Four of the participants were associated with the nursery industry and the other 2 worked in public relations for environmental organizations.
The workshop topics were the collection, extraction cleaning and storage of indigenous seed. I discovered that all of these procedures could be accomplished without specialist equipment and that the most difficult task for me would be
· Accurate plant identification
· Determining whether the seed was ready (ripe) to ‘pick’
Dan Frost (our instructor) spent a long time discussing the concept of provenance and then gave us his key guideline
Only collect seed when you know what you are going to do with it and only after you are confident of its provenance.
Dan talked a little about seed orchards and acknowledged that there was considerable scepticism from academics as to whether seed orchards could deliver provenance.
Seed collection requires a seed collectors permit (obtainable from DSE) and then permission from the land manager of the area where you intend to collect seed. National Guidelines for collection methods are available at www.florabank.org.au
Dan talked about the Seed bank’s operations which have been wound down with only a couple of employees left. They used to provide large quantities of seed for half a dozen Catchment Management Authorities in western Victoria but the business has almost halted.
Dan now spends a lot of time investigating germination rates and advising customers who may be getting poor germination rates, on how to plant the seed and how much seed they will need to purchase for their project.
Article by Barrie Taylor
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