Rock Doc

I work just a couple of blocks from a special kind of bank. It doesn’t accept money for deposit, it won’t finance a new car, and it wasn’t part of the housing bubble. This unusual kind of bank deals mostly in seeds that it preserves, sometimes propagates, and often disperses without charge to anyone who has a research use for unusual strains of crop plants.

Seed genebanks are part of the unseen work that helps increase the chance more people will have enough to eat for supper tonight. The seed vaults are part of a federal-state partnership that preserves a vast number of crop strains, keeping...