Status and future of seed conservation of threatened plants in the post‐2020 era

Societal Impact Statement Ambitious targets have been set to backup seeds of threatened plants by the global strategy for plant conservation (GSPC), but it is unclear in how far these targets have been met and how seed collection should be organized to meet future challenges. Here, we provide an overview of the status of 44 countries in achieving seed conservation targets. We show that progress varies strongly across countries, but in general, targets of the 2011–2020 GSCP have not been reached. By a regional example, we illustrate how seed collection could be organized to safeguard our threatened flora. Summary Seed banking of wild plants is a central pillar of conservation strategies for threatened plants. Target 8 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) called for at least 75% of threatened plant species to be conserved ex situ by 2020, but to what extent countries have achieved this target is unclear. Consequently, it is unknown how seed banking should be organized in future to safeguard plant diversity and support the increasing demand for seeds for habitat restoration. We conducted a comprehensive survey across 44 countries in Europe and western Asia and collected information on seed bank stocks of native taxa. We harmonized the taxonomic names across the collections and matched them against a database of national plant Red Lists to assign each taxon its IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) threat status in its country of origin. We analysed each country's achievement in terms of the conservation of its threatened flora and evaluated the quality of the collections in terms of genetic representativeness and seed quantity. We found that none of the studied countries had reached Target 8 of the GSPC by 2020. While a few countries had come close to it, on average only 21% of threatened taxa were conserved across countries. Our results demonstrate that the current seed conservation strategy has not met conservation demands. Using an example from Belgium, where considerable progress has been achieved by investing in a network of volunteer seed collectors, we show how future seed collection could be organized in collaborative community‐based approaches.