The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership (MSBP) is a global conservation initiative and the largest ex-situ plant conservation programme in the world (http://www.kew.org/science-conservation/collections/millennium-seed-bank). We have coordinated the development of a network of Partners across some 80 countries with over 100 seed collecting institutes actively targeting, collecting, storing and germinating seed collections. Our immediate focus is to secure and make available, seed and germination protocols of the most important plants from regions of the world most at risk from the ever-increasing impact of human activities, including land use and climate change.

With 75,000 accessions from over 35,000 species already held at the Millennium Seed Bank at Royal Botanic Garden (RGB) Kew's Wakehurst Place site, our aim is to collect and store seed accessions from 25% of plant species with bankable seeds (c. 75,000 species) by 2020. Storage will be at both Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank and seed banks across the MSBP. This conservation target forms one of Kew’s strategic science and conservation outcomes for 2015-2020 http://www.kew.org/science-conservation/kews-science-strategy.

Multiple funding agencies of the MSBP have committed to helping us secure the 25% target. Being able to "count" how many species are in appropriately commissioned seed banks across the MSBP requires two actions:

• Firstly we need to be able to bring the various accessions datasets together in one database; and
• Secondly, we need to be confident that each accession is held at an agreed level of quality, matching that achieved at the MSB.

Compiling Partner data

Warehousing and subsequent delivery of accession and germination test data from seed collections across a network of seed banks remains a major outcome of and a vital resource for the MSBP. The MSBP Data Warehouse uses an underlying offline BRAHMS database (http://www.brahmsonline.com) to compile accession and germination test data submitted by partners from across the network. This database then drives a BRAHMS Online website (http://brahmsonline.kew.org/msbp) to deliver information of use to MSB Partners in collection planning, management and germination research. The MSBP Data Warehouse displays progress towards the 25% target and affords an opportunity to provide a number of useful resources to seed conservation practitioners.

Collections quality

In order to be a useful resource for in-situ actions and therefore contribute to our seed collection target, each accession for which data is compiled in the MSBP Data Warehouse has to meet a series of seed conservation standards. The BRAHMS Seed Manager module has been designed to calculate a score for each of these MSB standards based on the accession data submitted. Thus each seed accession has a quality value attached to it whether in Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank or any other seed bank across the MSBP.

This presentation demonstrates the offline BRAHMS database and integrated seed conservation standards calculations. We will also demonstrate the value in sharing seed accession and germination test data to Partners across the MSBP.