A Noah’s Ark for plants in West Sussex: Millennium Seed Bank near Haywards Heath now has 40,000 different plant species

By Lawrence Smith

Published 13th Mar 2023, 17:22 BST

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A world-leading seed conservation programme based near Haywards Heath has hit a major milestone.

The Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) at Wakehurst in Ardingly has announced that, as of March 1, it has banked more than 2.4 billion individual seeds, which represent a total of 40,020 different species of wild plants.

Described by scientists as ‘Noah’s Ark for plants’, the MSB stores 98,567 seed collections in a bomb and flood-proof building from 190 countries and territories.