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10/22/2009 Yunnan banana joins Millennium Seed BankYunnan banana joins Millennium Seed Bank The Yunnan banana, aka Musa itinerans aka bajiao (芭蕉),has been added to Kew's Millennium Seed Bank at the Royal Botanical Gardens in the UK. The bajiao seeds were provided to the seed bank by the Kunming Institute of Botany. The addition of bajiao seeds from Yunnan also marked the 10 percent mark for the seed bank, which now has seeds of 24,200 species in its possession, with a goal of ultimately collecting seeds of 242,000 species. The seed bank is aiming to mitigate the possibility of extinction for the world's flowering plants, 70 percent of which are under threat. The bajiao plant, which exists in an area spanning from Yunnan into Southeast Asia and India, is threatened by the increased clearing of jungle for agriculture. Despite not being a major crop for human consumption, it can be used to breed disease-resistant hybrid banana varieties. It is also a staple for the endangered Asian elephant and other animals in the region. The bajiao seeds have been dried and are now being stored at -20 degrees Celsius in a US$131 million facility, located in Sussex. The seed bank estimates that as many as one quarter of the world's flowering plant species may be on the brink of extinction by the middle of this century. TrackbacksThe trackback URL for this entry is: http://fungimucida.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!7F4F3E3068A9C8!1724.trak Weblogs that reference this entry
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