An important message about the future of SID (Seed Information Database) and how you can help
In December 2021, RBG - Kew announced that, due to an agency compliance issue regarding accessibility, they will discontinue the Seed Information Database (SID) in March 2022.
SID has been an invaluable and reliable source of information on native seeds for countless stakeholders for many years. It provides user-friendly access to essential information on seed weight, storage behaviour, germination requirements, and other traits for more than 50.000 plant taxa. This wealth of information has supported everyday operations in scientific research, seed use in ecological restoration, seed collection and propagation, and teaching (just to name a few). Upon learning about the plans to discontinue SID, members of the native seed community expressed their concern about this news.
“As producers of seeds of native Scottish plants for use in ecological restoration, we are very frequent users of the database. SID is our first port of call for information about seed testing protocols and storage when dealing with new species in our production and has been extremely useful to us and to many users of our seeds who we often refer to the database. It has been so useful to us that the manager of our seed testing laboratory has described its closure as ‘like losing a colleague’.”
The mission of the International Network for Seed-based Restoration (INSR) is to support the exchange of ideas, approaches, lessons learned, and data relevant to planning, policy, and science as it relates to native seed biology, ecology, and seed-based restoration. To this end, the board of INSR, along with SER, has communicated with RBG Kew staff, expressing our concern about the negative impact of closing SID. The growing community of restoration practitioners rely on SID as the go-to resource that is accessible, simple to use, and available across global platforms. Kew has described their plans to implement a new Global Seed Information Facility (GSIF ) by 2025. While the concept of GSIF as a portal for data sounds promising for the future, we are currently quite concerned about the loss of access to data for users during the period between the closure of SID in 2022 and the completion of GSIF in two or three years.
“Without SID, the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration and major international initiatives such as global forest landscape restoration will not have reliable, well curated and scientifically accurate information to guide seed-based solutions.
The world without SID will be in a poorer position to make accurate, science-based decisions about seed-based restoration and conservation. This is at a time when all our technical resources need to be at full capacity to ensure the impending climate and biodiversity crises are averted.
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We wish to better understand the potential impact of discontinuing SID on native seed use. For this reason, we’d like to hear from you about your experience with SID and how its closure could impact you and your organization by completing the short survey below.
INSR, along with SER and other organisations, is exploring alternative ways with RBG Kew to maintain easy access to the SID data beyond March 2022. Your response to this survey will help us with these discussions and aid us in moving forward on this matter, potentially looking for alternative hosting options.