Talk:Gene bank
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Discussion
Sources
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2014), Genebank Standards for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, revised edition: the standards and definitions, by printed page.
- Engels and Ebert (2021), Plants 10: 1557 and 1904: the history of the global system, base and active collections, and the global figures of the FAO's second report (2010).
- Herbold and Engels (2023), Plants 12: 2874: losses at gene banks. Fu (2024), Frontiers in Plant Science 15: 1437541: genetic change in stored accessions. Westengen, Jeppson and Guarino (2013), PLoS ONE 8: e64146, and the Crop Trust: the Svalbard vault.
- Welling and colleagues (2016), Frontiers in Plant Science 7: 1113: the list of cannabis collections, with Clarke (1998) on the Vavilov Institute and Mańkowska and Silska (2015) on Poznań.
- The holders' own data, with the date read: GRIN-Global for the National Plant Germplasm System, the Vavilov Institute's database and the FAO's Global Information System (GLIS) for the other holders.
- Torne and colleagues (2025), BMC Plant Biology 26: 133, and the court judgment and advertisements behind The Seed Bank: "seed bank" in the trade. Zhao, Luo and Liu (2026), Scientific Data 13: 806: the soil seed bank.
Where the counts come from
Every count in the table is dated because holdings change. The figures are not comparable in every respect and are not added together, since a lot can be held in more than one place.
- Geneva. The American database lists 873 cannabis entries: 696 at the Northeast Regional Plant Introduction Station at Geneva, 18 in the Plant Variety Protection Voucher Collection and 159 historic entries. The G series of accession numbers has 703 entries, so it runs slightly wider than the Geneva figure. The page for an accession that can be requested shows a stock line; the others read "This accession is not available".
- Vavilov Institute. The total is dated 6 November 2026. The status and origin figures come from the accession pages as they stood on 4 October 2026, when the total was the same. The status count of 302 translates the Russian "Традиционный/стародавний сорт" as traditional or old cultivar. The database is cited without a link because it has no stable address.
- GLIS. The figures for these holders are what each has registered in GLIS. A holder's own catalogue may be longer. The American and Russian collections have no cannabis entries in GLIS, so those two come from their own databases. GLIS has two holder names for the institute at Gatersleben (55 and one), both under the code DEU146, added together here.
Poznań: 139 or about 150
The abstract of Mańkowska and Silska (2015) gives about 150 accessions. Welling and colleagues (2016), citing the same paper, give 139. Both figures stand in the table.
Global figures
The totals of about 7.4 million accessions and about 1,750 gene banks are those of the FAO's second report (2010), as given by Engels and Ebert and by Westengen and colleagues. Fu (2024) gives more than 7.4 million in 2,000 gene banks. The FAO has since issued a third report; its figures may differ.
Svalbard
The Crop Trust's figures for the vault cover all crops and do not break out cannabis.
Seed vendors
Vendors that sell cannabis seed are not listed among the holders, whatever their stock. Where seed has passed from a vendor or a collector to a gene bank, the accession is counted at the gene bank.
The label "landrace"
The figures are each holder's own status for its accessions. They do not assess whether a lot is a landrace in the sense of the FAO glossary, and the wording differs between databases. In some American batches the person named as collector is the donor.