by the INSR Board & Ted Chapman (Royal Botanic Gardens Kew)
The 8th World Conference on Ecological Restoration (SER2019) in Cape Town provided an ideal venue for our second International Native Seed in Restoration symposium. Over 150 attendees across five symposium sessions and one training session generated lively questions and discussion between talks. All those present were enthusiastic that this forum was valuable and supported the next international symposium at SER2021 in South Korea.
Stay tuned for updates!
Kingsley Dixon (Curtin University & INSR) kicks-off the INSR symposium “Seeds for Global Restoration: Implementing the International Standards for Native Seeds”.
The training session
Kirstenbosch National Botanic Garden and the slopes of Table Mountain provided a spectacular backdrop to the SER 2019 pre-conference training course “Basic concepts and best practice in native seed collection, production and use”, organised by the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, INSR and the South Africa National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI). Practitioners from four continents were treated to a whistle-stop overview of seed biology, seed collection techniques, options for wild seed harvest, ex situ seed production, germination and dormancy, reintroduction strategies and the growing possibilities offered by seed coating and other technologies. We managed to squeeze in two practical sessions – flower and seed dissection and a pre-collection population assessment – providing an insight into the extraordinary variety of native seed and the importance of handling it with understanding and care. It was a great example of how INSR and partners can play a role in increasing our collective knowledge about native seeds and promoting improved standards in seed-based restoration.
The training session participants said:
“A very comprehensive introductory workshop for those interested in seed ecology and technology and for those involved in all aspects of ecological restoration”
Berta Youtie
Eastern Oregon Stewardship Services and Deschutes Basin Native Plant Seed Bank
“The course and activities were a practical and scientific overview of the best management practices for field collecting seed.”
Matt Taylor
Director, Research and Conservation, Longwood Gardens
Clare Trivedi (Royal Botanic Gardens Kew) presents “Effectively conserving a species’ genetic variation ex situ: the case of Fraxinus excelsior in the UK” in the first session of the INSR symposium “Sourcing the seed we need: Generating adequate and appropriate native seed supplies”.
The symposium
Seeds for Global Restoration, a series of five sessions, focused on: 1) Sourcing the seed we need; 2) Managing seed supplies; 3) Assessing site conditions and getting seeds restoration-ready; 4) Seeding strategies for biodiversity and ecosystem services; and 5) Seed supplies and seeding strategies for Brazil’s forests and savannas. Speakers included experts from six continents.
The sessions were spread over three days, providing attendees with opportunities to become acquainted, share experiences, socialize, and talk about how the presentations relate to their work.
Congratulations to Danilo Urzedo, one of the Brazilian speakers in session #5, who received the Best Student Oral Presentation Award.
Marcello De Vitis (Chicago Botanic Garden & INSR) talks about native seed certification systems from around the world as part of the second session of the INSR symposium “Managing seed supplies: Assessing and maintaining seed quality”.
The attendees of the symposium said:
“The INSR Symposium was a unique opportunity to connect global advances in science, technology and initiatives to reframe strategies to overcome the current shortage of native seed supply. The Brazilian experiences demonstrated the capacity to develop seed networks based on indigenous knowledge and community participation to promote large-scale restoration with socioeconomic benefits.”
Danilo Urzedo
PhD Candidate, School of Geosciences, University of Sydney, Australia
“Regardless of the nature of your interest in seed-based restoration or your scale of investigation and application, there were stimulating talks at INSR symposium at SER 2019 that provided diverse perspectives from around the world. The talks in this session underscored the importance of thoughtful decision making from the phase of seed collection, certification, seed increase, germination treatment, and site preparation. Through this session, we all obtained a deeper understanding of each critical seed-handling step that supports successful restoration.”
Prof. Dr. Julie R. Etterson
Director, Institute on the Environment - Duluth, Department of Biology, University of Minnesota Duluth
“I found the sessions organized by INSR during the SER conference in Cape Town very helpful for my future work on habitat restoration. I feel impressed by the evolving seed standards, developed seed strategies and increasing high-quality native seed propagation around the world and met many long known and new people committed to seed-based restoration”
Prof. Dr. Sabine Tischew
Anhalt University of Applied Sciences, Bernburg, Germany
“Learning from other’s experiences leads to new insights on your own work, and we think that was the most valuable knowledge we’ve got by attending these talks involving restoration with native seeds. And we’ve met new people and enlarged our working network, which is always positive. Another thing we realized was that most works presented ignored the soil seed bank of the places to be restored. Our advice is that sampling soil seed bank to know what is still in there may be useful to design restoration strategies and (eventually) decrease restoration costs”
Anabela D.F. Belo & Carla Pinto-Cruz
Assistant Professors, Dept. of Biology, Laboratory of Botany / ICAAM - Institute for Mediterranean, Agrarian and Environmental Sciences / LABS - Landscape, Biodiversity and Socio-ecological Processes Research Group / University of Évora, Portugal
“The INSR sessions brought together an inspiring and globally diverse group of people with the common goal of maximising success with seed-based restoration. I was impressed with the volume of speakers and attendees participating in these sessions. I learned so much from both the presentations and questions!”
Dr Emma Ladouceur
Postdoctoral Researcher, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Germany
“The INSR symposium has been a lecture on the state of the art of direct seeding (DS) for ecological restoration on many places on Earth, presented by important researchers and practitioners. It builds a lot of confidence for us, since in Brazil the DS strategy is either unknown, misused or discarded for many reasons. We learnt here how could we DS on dry sites or wetlands, pros & cons of farming native seeds, seed coating or not, targeting natural forests or fields. Made great contacts, for example, with researchers interested in helping to develop seed provenance maps for Brazil. There were some interesting discussions about policy and legislation for native seeds in different contexts. While the barriers are surprisingly similar, we can see that each country is at a different stage of "market" consolidation, and have found or tried an array of solutions and strategies that may help others, if carefully shared. A session on that theme could be great for the next symposium!”
Eduardo Malta Campos Filho
Technical coordinator for ecological restoration, ISA - Instituto Socioambiental, Brazil
Kay Havens (Chicago Botanic Garden) presents “Seeds and Stewards of the future: a US collaboration” during the fourth session of the INSR symposium “Seeding strategies for improving biodiversity and ecosystem services”.
Danilo Urzedo (University of Sydney/Brazilian Forest Seed Committee) presents “Seed networks for upscaling native seed supply in Brazil” in the fifth session of the INSR symposium, “Seed supplies and seeding strategies for Brazil’s forests and savannas”. Danilo received the Best Student Oral Presentation Award for this talk.
The member’s meetings
The INSR Board, members, and interested persons met for the official Thematic Section meeting with networking and strategic planning on both Wednesday and Thursday. After briefly introducing themselves, the mission of INSR, and on-going initiatives of INSR, the board members invited questions, comments and suggestions from the audience.
Audience participants had interesting questions and helpful suggestions such as:
How can we best facilitate interactions (group discussions) like an information exchange on "tricks of the trade" among INSR members? [Previously there was an online forum that was not readily used but we are open to new ideas.]
Can collaboration with INSR be highlighted as a potential "broader impacts" in grant proposals? [Yes, by suggesting information sharing via our newsletter, for example. Otherwise new initiatives could be proposed to the Board for discussion.]
Can INSR advocate? [Yes to the extent allowed by law under SER's tax status, however this is not something we are actively pursuing.]
Can we help improve relations between academics and industry? [Theoretically yes, but this is likely beyond the scope of what INSR’s current capacity.]
The INSR Board was very pleased to have such good attendance and interaction at the symposium sessions and the Section meeting. We look forward to INSR’s continued growth and effectiveness and to organising symposia at future conferences.
As usual, the INSR Board also organised a social dinner to spend some time with members and friends and have informal chats about seeds and beyond.
Add membership in INSR to your SER membership and connect with others working with native seeds and restoration
INSR members receive our quarterly e-newsletter with the latest news, events, research and breakthroughs about native seeds from all over the world.
If your SER membership is current, you can add a membership to INSR at no additional cost by signing in to ser.org, choose "Manage Profile" then "Edit Bio" then add INSR under the Additional Chapter Memberships field.
When joining SER or renewing your existing SER membership, you can add a membership to INSR at no additional cost by choosing INSR as the Primary or Secondary affiliation. Use the "Join" link in the upper right of the home page, ser.org.
About INSR
INSR is the largest global network on Native Seed with more than 50 partners from research institutions, seed producers, and restoration practitioners and 350 members, from almost 50 countries representing all the continents.
Our website, ser-insr.org is the platform where you may share your native seed projects, stories, experiences and experiments, as an article news or webinar, stay up to date with upcoming events and conferences worldwide, and access material on various aspects of native seeds, from collection and curation protocol to seed use and seed technology.
If you have an interesting story or publication you'd like to share or some good techniques and tricks you've developed that could be helpful to other seed scientists, producers and users, we'd be happy to hear about it!
INSR is on social media. Find and follow us on Facebook (@seed4restoration), Twitter (@InfoInsr) and Instagram (@seed4restoration).
Get in touch with us through the email address info@ser-insr.org if you’d like to share your work or ask a question or get to know more about seed-based restoration!