April - May 2002

New & Notable on www.eco-index.org: Safe, Dependable Seeds You Can Bank On

Project Name: Forest Seed Bank

Managing NGO, countries: Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE), working in Central America and the Dominican Republic

Project director: William Vásquez C.

Synopsis: CATIE's Forest Seed Bank provides seeds from forest tree species to researchers and foresters throughout Central America. The seed bank was created in 1967 in response to continual needs for good quality seeds of known origin. Project staff also pro-vides technical assistance through databases, labora-tory analysis, guidebooks, manuals, and field visits and offers training in how to collect, store, import and export seeds. A project goal is to encourage the conservation of tropical forestry and agroforestry tree species. Plans call for expanding work to Mexico and Ecuador.

Annual budget & donors: $100,000 from GTZ (German International Development Agency) and the Danish Agency for International Cooperation.

Lessons learned: "Identifying priority species with participation from civil society, searching for mech-anisms that ensure the stability of the trees and seed sources, training local crews for seed collection, and establishing a small seed bank with few personnel, is essential for forest seed supply programs."

Contact:

CATIE
Apdo 7170-137
Turrialba, Costa Rica
Tel: 506/556-1933
Fax: 506/556-7766
bsf@catie.ac.cr
or
wvasquez@catie.ac.cr
www.catie.ac.cr

To see a list of available seeds and other reports related to this project, read the profile in the Eco-Index:
www.eco-index.org/search/results.cfm?ProjectID=292