Seeds which have been stored away since the time of George III have been persuaded into new life. Scientists from the Millennium Seed Bank, part of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, have induced seeds from three species to germinate.
They had been brought to Britain from South Africa by a Dutch merchant in 1803, and were found in a notebook stored in the National Archives.
Given this history, the Kew team said they were surprised by their success.
“They had been kept under pretty poor conditions,” said Matt Daws, a seed ecologist with the Millennium Seed Bank.
“They’d been in a ship for a year, certainly for months, coming back from the Cape, then they’d been kept in the Tower of London for a number of years; only in the last 10 years have they been in controlled conditions.
“So I didn’t expect any of them to germinate,” he told the BBC News website, “and the three that did really are tough seeds.”
When the plants are older, the Kew scientists plan to make genetic and genomic analyses, and compare the old plants with modern-day equivalents, perhaps showing how Cape species have changed and adapted over the last two centuries.”
Terrific experiment. Adding to a genetic timeline like this has to be a unique opportunity..
Just think: you could freeze your sperm for 2,000 years and then the scientists then could remix it with your own 20th generation grandchild.
I’ve read claims that seeds buried with the pharaohs in the Egyptian pyramids germinated…after 5,000 years. But that could be urban legend, too.
Anasazi beans (a commercial “boutique bean” similar to pinto beans) were first grown from a sealed jar of beans found in a New Mexico “cave dwelling” (rock shelter). Those beans were dated to be 1500 years old. Apparently seeds can be pretty hardy in the right conditions.
1) just a quibble, but it would be more like your 60 or 70th generation grandchild – a generation is about 30 years, not 100
I wonder how damaged are the genes of those 3 seeds due to old age?
Bruce, quibbling is what we do best on this site.
You can buy the decendants of thos Anasazi beans now for farm use. My brother has 1 acre of them planted.
#2..olo Baggins…yep….if I’m not mistaken(and i can be so often) it was barley and rye…they think from an old beer producing site. Also, since so much new has happened in this area, they are now trying to germinate seeds from tombs…flowers and fruit and grain.
I know they found some honey beer in an old tomb that was not spoiled or dried up. Egyptians really liked their beer.
I wonder if these plants can survive todays blights. Not having the benefit of 200 years of evolution can hurt.
Seems to me that I heard of even older seeds being germinated.
…. quick Google… yeah here it is:
>> Dormant for 2,000 Years, an Ancient Seed Sprouts
>> Day to Day, June 16, 2005 · Alex Chadwick talks with Ira Flatow, host of NPR’s Talk of the Nation Science Friday, about a 2,000-year-old date seed that has recently begun to sprout in the Middle East. Israeli scientists excavated the seeds from an ancient storeroom found during an archeological dig.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4706151
AMAZING!