PLANT CONSERVATION METHODS

IN SITU

 legal protection of species

• strict protection
• partial protection

 passive protection

may be sufficient for the plants characteristic for stable ecosystems, like forests

 active protection

necessary e.g. in the case of plants belonging to semi-natural communities, maintained by the man’s activity,
e.g. cutting seedlings of shrubs and trees, pasturing, mowing, fertilizing



monuments of nature

(usually individual trees or their groups, e.g. Taxus baccata)

 protected areas:

• national parks
• landscape parks
• nature reserves
• Natura 2000 sites

EX SITU

(off-site; outside the natural habitat)

 gene banks

Advantages:
• increased security of genetic resources
• good source of plant material for propagation, reintroduction, agrotechnical experiments
Disadvantages:
• ex situ conserved sample of the species may represent a narrower range of genetic variation

in comparison with that occurring in the wild

• species conserved ex situ may suffer genetic erosion

• seed banks

Advantages:

• large number of accessions can be stored in a small space

Disadvantages:

• seed collections require careful monitoring, i.e. testing viability of seeds at regular intervals
• necessity of regeneration
• useless for the species that do not produce seeds or produce recalcitrant seeds

• field gene banks = field collections

Advantages:

• specially useful for the species:

- producing recalcitrant seeds
- producing little or no seeds
- preferably stored as a clonal material
- that have a long life cycle to generate breeding and/or planting material

• easy access for characterisation and evaluation

Disadvantages:

• take up a lot of space
• cannot conserve full genetic variation range
• vulnerable to disease epidemics and pests

• in vitro storage and cryopreservation

Cryopreservation = storage of tissue and cell cultures at ultra-low temperatures (e.g. -196°C, in liquid nitrogen)
- used for long-term storage of ‘difficult’ species

Disadvantages:

• requires advanced infrastructure and well-trained staff
• need to develop individual maintenance protocols for the species
• risk of somaclonal variation
• high costs

Augmentation

(enhancement, reinforcement, restocking) – addition of individuals to an existing population,

with the aim of increasing population size or diversity and improve its viability

Translocation

(transplantation) – movement of plants from one on-site location to any other site

Reintroduction

– placement of native plants back into formerly occupied or suitable habitat within the plants’

natural range

Benign introduction (conservation introduction)

– an attempt to establish a species, for the purpose of

conservation, outside its recorded distribution but within an appropriate habitat and eco-geographical area
(when there is no remaining area left within a species historical range)

 Introduction of wild growing medicinal plants into cultivation

 Sustainable harvesting of wild growing medicinal plants