UK genebank on BBC Radio 4

Mike Ambrose manages the UK’s largest seed collection based at the John Innes Centre in Norwich.

With a collection of 25,000 seeds from around the world, he tells Caz how looking into the past helps meet the ‘wish-list’ criteria of plant breeders today.

That’s from the Programme Details for this morning’s Farming Today, on BBC Radio 4. I’m sure they have more than 25,000 seeds, but that’s just a quibble. ((The item is right at the start of the programme, so don’t worry about exploding with rage at the prospect of listening to plans to spend 2 million euros on homoeopathy for livestock.)) Did Mike Ambrose really say that the John Innes genebank has seen a 7% year-on-year increase in requests for seed? How much of that went to farmers, I wonder, rather than to breeders.

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