Innovation Anthology #536:

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When banking seeds for future oil sands reclamation, plant ecologist Ann Smreciu has learned that for some plants, it may not be possible to harvest enough seeds from the wild.

As Ann told researchers at the 2013 CONRAD Symposium, the new Oil Sands Vegetation Cooperative is addressing that issue.

ANN SMRECIU: In the future we’re looking towards a couple of things. One, we could grow them in nurseries and set up basically seed orchards where we would harvest what we could from the wild. And then multiply them under agriculture conditios and harvest seed from orchards, much the same way that you would harvest fruit. You have to be very careful when you do that to maintain the genetic diversity so that you are not getting all the same genetic material. The other thing is for plants that grow better vegetatively than from seed, you can set up what are called stoollin beds, and you basically grow these in an orchard situation and then you take cuttings of either stems or roots depending on the type of plant.

According to Ann Smreciu of Wildrose Consulting, this year her group will start collecting riparian and wetland species to bank with Oil Sands Vegetation Cooperative.

Thanks today to Syncrude.

I’M CHERYL CROUCHER

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Syncrude

Program Date: 2013-02-21