Investment

The Australian Pastures Genebank (APG) is the custodian of one of the world's most diverse and significant temperate and tropical pasture and forage collections. The APG was established in 2014 from eleven significant pasture seed collections from around Australia; it currently holds 74,000 accessions from 2600 species, collected from 178 countries. The collection is globally unique, with almost 90% of the accessions collected from the wild by Australian scientists over the last 70 years.

In the last three years (2019-2022), the APG has finalised the amalgamation of the eleven collections from around Australia. The seed is now housed in excellent conditions at -20C, is searchable online in a single database, and is available for ordering. A Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) has been developed to identify duplicates and prioritise viability monitoring and regeneration at both the species and accession level, so that future resources will be efficiently directed to first conserve the most unique and valuable germplasm.

The APG's viability testing program monitored the seed health of over 13,000 accessions in the last three years. An experienced network of scientists across four states regenerated 1915 accessions with poor quality and/ or low volume seed in 2019-2022, taking into consideration the plants reproductive systems to ensure quality and purity are not compromised. Fresh seed is returned for storage in the -20C Base store and backed up at national and international safety deposit centres. Almost half of the collection is now duplicated at the Global Seed Vault, Svalbard.