Seed harvesting

Why is grassy ecosystem restoration so hard…it doesn’t have to be? Paul Gibson-Roy shines the light on the USA’s approach. In 2015 Paul received a Winston Churchill fellowship to explore the industry in the USA .He shares his findings of the scale and viability of the industry and the government incentives and the structures that [...]

Ross Rapmund provides a clear overview of the production requirements of a community nursery and the role a nursery can play in alleviating the impacts of population fragmentation in the landscape. This snapshot highlights the need for genetic diversity in seed stock, how that diversity is encouraged and the importance of documentation. Topic Mins: [...]

The million dollar question of 'provenance' is eloquently described by Linda Broadhurst within the context of habitat fragmentation and climate change impacts. The talk simply explains the role of genetics in understanding inbreeding depressions and how they can arise from small population sizes or reduced parental numbers. A must see video for anyone who collects [...]

How do you ensure your restoration project will be resilient in times of changing climate and increased fragmentation across the landscape? Tein McDonald discusses with Linda Broadhurst the implications of population size, the parental gene pool and the significance of pollinators in ensuring genetic diversity and countering inbreeding depression. In this expanding field, the importance [...]

Nola Hancock’s talk on local provenance and more distant seed sources tackled the big question. Does seed from the local site perform better? Nola’s conclusion is that mixing seed sources are best. In addition the disadvantages of local provenance were that due to the fragmentation of the landscape, population sizes are smaller which increases inbreeding [...]

Tim Berryman is at the coalface of restoration, developing strategies and processes to reinstate grassy understory local plant assemblages on mine rehabilitation sites. This presentation outines the who, what, where, when, why and how of grassy understory restoration. Tim discusses the importance of partnerships and the need to push the boundaries in order to develop [...]