Kew just opened a seed library for the whole world — 2.5 billion seeds, now findable in one place

Somewhere in Sussex, in the Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst, sit more than 2.5 billion seeds from over 40,000 wild plant species — insurance against extinction, and the raw material for restoring damaged land. The problem was finding anything: seed banks worldwide kept their knowledge scattered. This week the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew launched SeedPOD, a free open platform where seed banks — including small ones, in multiple languages, on low-bandwidth connections — can list their collections and germination know-how in one searchable place. 'Seed banks hold an extraordinary resource and decades of knowledge,' says Kew's Elinor Breman. 'SeedPOD will help unlock those collections' — in time to help restore 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030.

SDG 15 · Life on land — Mechanism: tech innovation