Abstract:

Community seed banks are mainly informal institutions, locally governed and managed, whose core function is to preserve seeds for local use. They have existed for about 30 years, conserving, restoring, revitalizing, strengthening, and improving local seed systems, especially, but not solely, focused on local varieties. They are known by a variety of names: community genebank, farmer seed house, seed hut, seed wealth centre, seed savers group, association or network, community seed reserve, seed library, and community seed bank. The women and men farmers who run community seed banks handle major crops, minor crops, and neglected and underutilized species, sometimes in small quantities of a few hundred grams per accession, sometimes storing hundreds of kilograms. The content of this handbook, directly and indirectly, reflects our Bioversity International, community seed bank expertise resulting from over 25 years of work in the field collaborating with many researchers, practitioners, and farmers and in the office through literature reviews, critical reflections, and discussions about our work, as well as writing stories, papers, articles, and books.