The Lyon Arboretum at UH Mānoa currently preserves 35 million seeds of native plants in Hawai’i.
However, the seed bank building on the arboretum grounds is being renovated, said Nathaniel Kingsley, the arboretum’s seed conservation laboratory manager. All of the endangered seeds had to be carefully transferred into a singular classroom on UH Mānoa’s campus in St. John’s Plant Science Lab.
“Once the freezers and refrigerators (containing the seeds) were removed from power, we prioritized moving them immediately,” Kingsley said. “We loaded up all the units and drove straight down to campus to plug them back in.”
The seeds were without power for about an hour, and all survived the journey, Kingsley said.
The arboretum was started by the Hawaii Sugar Planters’ Association in 1918 to test sugarcane varieties and test reforestation in deforested areas to protect the watershed. It was transferred to UH Mānoa in 1953.
“There are about 100 species of plants that have gone extinct in Hawai’i since people came and there are a bunch of species of plants that are extinct in the wild,” said Don Drake, interim director of the arboretum. “So the only place they exist is in seed banks or greenhouses or gardens or something like that.”
Drake explained the role of the Lyon Arboretum seed bank in restoring native plant species.
“We grow them to a certain size, and we send them back, and they get put in the ground, and then grow there,” said Drake.
The seed bank typically preserves seeds for 10 years, which is longer than most other seed banks. Each species requires a distinct restoration process that will prolong its longevity while it waits to be replanted.
But the process is not that simple. Different species require different processes to be preserved, including variations in dew point, temperature, and light cycles.
“So when seeds come into the collection, we dry them down to about 20% relative humidity in hopes to achieve about 5% moisture content before freezing them or storing them in the refrigerator,” said Kingsley.
Each seed has been thoroughly studied and tested to find the right specifications in order for them to be preserved. The seed bank has created storage classifications that need to maintain the right temperature. Otherwise the endangered seeds will die.
“There’s been years of research that’s gone into this from this lab in particular, and there are three different storage behaviors of a lot of these seeds,” Kingsley said. “And so the first and the most ideal, of what we refer to as orthodox and they can tolerate drying, and they can tolerate frozen storage at minus 20 degrees Celsius.”
The Lyon Arboretum seed bank will preserve the seeds of endangered species until the land is habitable again for them to survive on their own.
“We’ve kind of had the opportunity with having so many unique collections and being such a large facility for a sea plant that we have a lot of time to do a lot of research on these species and different optimal methods of conserving,” said Kingsley. “So it’s kind of a neat place to be.”
