ENSCONET, the European Native Seed Conservation Network, opens today its web site to the public (www.ensconet.com). ENSCONET wants this web site to be a window to the world of plant seed conservation in Europe.

The aims of ENSCONET are to improve the quality, co-ordination and integration of European seed conservation practice, policy and research, and to assist the European Union’s conservation policy and its obligations to the Convention on Biological Diversity.

One of the primary targets of ENSCONET is to provide simple and understandable information on seeds and conservation – information that from today on is available for much more people. As Simon Linington, chair of the ENSCONET management team, says “Having a website that is kept up-to-date with interesting content is essential in any modern project. It is particularly important in the case of an EU Co-ordination Action such as ENSCONET where providing technologists, researchers, policy makers and the public with the outcome of its activities is central”

With this web site, ENSCONET creates a participative and open space where members of the scientific community and non-experts can interact. “We want to use the web site and its associated e-forum to inform and to increase dialogue”, Simon Linington says. Users will be able to express their opinions, to raise their doubts, or to make their contributions.

The ENSCONET web site is expected to expand its scope and contents over the next years. In near future, it will provide access to a virtual data base of European seeds; furthermore, it will offer virtual visits of the ENSCONET network partners and their seed conservation facilities.

The web site has been developed by the dissemination group of the project, co-ordinated by Elena Estrelles, head of the Germplasm Bank of the Jardí Botànic of the Universitat de València in collaboration with all the other network partners.

In its first year of life, ENSCONET has combined efforts in the European scope of seed conservation to avoid the loss of our natural patrimony. This collaboration has already given its first fruits with the recovery of Bromus bromoideus, a Belgian endemic plant species disappeared 70 years ago. This grass species has been brought back to life thanks to the joint work of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (United Kingdom) and the National Botanic Garden of Belgium.