ECHO's Seed Bank
Spreading Seeds of Hope
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ECHO’s Seed Bank contains about 350 varieties of hard-to-find vegetables, multi-purpose trees, fruits, and other tropical crops, which hold special potential for producing under difficult conditions. |
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Assistant Seed Bank Manager in 2003, Cheryl Beckett, finishes cleaning rice seeds. |
One of ECHO's best-known programs is to send free, trial packets of seed to overseas missionaries and development workers. ECHO’s seedbank contains over 335 varieties of hard-to-find food plants, multi-purpose trees, fruit trees, and other tropical crops. These plants hold special potential for producing under difficult conditions—where it is too dry, too wet, or too hilly for most crops.
Overseas missionaries and development workers who receive seeds report back to ECHO on performance and acceptance of the plants in their conditions. This information is kept in ECHO's seed database and often shared in EDN - ECHO Development Notes, ECHO's technical bulletin for overseas missionaries and development workers. In some cases, a pack of 10 seeds has multiplied into thousands of plants or helped introduce a new crop into several parts of the world. North American gardeners may also purchase packets of selected seeds to plant in their own gardens.
Overseas Seed Catalog - (Available only for community development projects overseas or scientific research).
U.S. Seed Catalog
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ECHO's plant information sheets give a short description of some of the plants in our seedbank and are available in PDF format on our technical website, www.echotech.org. |
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Jack Bean, a hardy legume that grows well in poor soils.
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We help agricultural development workers who introduce concepts and techniques to small farmers for growing food more efficiently and using the land more sustainably.
• ECHO’s Seed Bank provides trial size packets for evaluation of plants that have potential to be used in local communities. ECHO strives to provide the necessary seeds for hard to find plants and useful crops to help small farmers. Trials are conducted to see which seeds will provide the best results locally, choosing crops that adapt well and provide high yield and nutrition.
• ECHO’s Seed Bank seeks to preserve important plant genetic germ plasm. Saving seeds ensures the safety of the plants genetic material in a form that is viable and can be stored over a long period of time.
• ECHO’s Seed Bank holds over 350 varieties of hard-to-find fruits, vegetables, multi-purpose trees and other crops of value for agricultural workers in the developing world.
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An Idea is Born
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While doing post-doctoral work at Purdue University, ECHO's Executive Director, Dr. Martin Price, audited a course in which the professor discussed the book Under-Exploited Tropical Crops With Promising Economic Value by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Dr. Price wanted a few of the plants mentioned in the book for his research, but soon discovered that many of the plants mentioned were not only underutilized, but extremely difficult to track down! In the late 70's, when Dr. Price was acting as an advisor to ECHO, he attempted to obtain wax gourd seed for growth trials. Dr. Price turned to sources listed in the NAS book, however, many of these sources no longer had seeds available.
Such events helped Dr. Price realize that there are lots of plants that deserve to be tried, but are not being planted because few people know about them, and when they do read about them, they don't know where to purchase seeds. |
The First Years
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Dr. Price, who became ECHO's Executive Director in 1981, brought back 38 packets of different seeds from a visit to the USDA station in Puerto Rico. Every planting was an experiment, since none of the seeds had been tried in SW Florida. Much knowledge ultimately came out of those early years of trial and error.
Seeds that were harvested were initially kept in an intern's refrigerator. Several years later, ECHO received a grant to turn what used to be the intern's kitchen into a climate controlled seed storage room. Soon ECHO outgrew this facility.
In 1995, ECHO bought a used refrigerated shipping container for use as a seed bank. The temperature in the seed storage room could now be kept at 45ºF and the humidity kept as low as possible.
Former ECHO Intern, Becky George, stands at the entrance of the refrigerated shipping container acting as the Seed Bank in 1999. |
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Moving the refrigerated shipping container from one side of the Global Village to the other for renovations.
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In the summer of 2002 the refrigerated shipping container was moved and connected to a renovated building to create 864 square feet of additional space.
The seed bank now has phone, internet, office space, room for computers holding the seed bank database, and separate rooms where ECHO's many seed bank volunteers help clean, package, and inventory seeds.
Increased storage and efficiency has helped to expand ECHO's seed ministry. Also in 2002, Dr. Grace Ju joined the ECHO staff as the Seed Bank Manager to manage the continued growth of ECHO's rare seed collection, and to help meet the demands for seeds from our overseas network.
Most seeds are grown and collected on ECHO's farm; others are purchased or donated. A master backup of all our seeds is kept at the USDA seed storage laboratory in Fort Collins, Colorado, to further ensure the safety of this rare collection
ECHO's agricultural interns are trained in the process of growing, collecting, cleaning, and storing seeds. This provides valuable experience for interns training to work overseas.
Interns also have the opportunity to stay at ECHO following their internship to work as the Assistant Seed Bank Manager, gaining further experience working with seeds and in management.
Today, ECHO's Seed Bank now has phones, internet, office space, and a separate room for cleaning seeds, packaging, and inventory. |
The Process of Sending Seeds
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An ECHO Seed Bank volunteer packages seeds to be sent overseas. |
The process of sending seeds looks much like this:
1. A specialist who works with farmers in developing countries requests a packet of seeds.
2. ECHO sends a trial packet - free of charge - with a questionnaire to report the success of the trial. This helps ECHO make future recommendations regarding crops appropriate to grow in various conditions.
3. When the community development worker sends back the questionnaire, he may receive up to 10 additional packets of seeds for free.
4. This process can be repeated indefinitely with seeds of different plants. |
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