One of the key activities of LIFE FOR SEEDS project is the establishment of a seed bank, which can serve as a source of seeds for the restoration of grasslands and similar habitats, like fens, that are important for nature conservation. Seeds collected in various protected areas around Slovenia will be prepared for permanent storage in freezers by project partners from the Agricultural Institute of Slovenia.
To collect seeds of as many different species as possible and to ensure their genetic diversity we collected the seeds in thirty areas at intermittent Lake Cerknica that made it on the list of habitats important for nature conservation. In 2023 we collected 263 bags of seeds from 71 plant species with each bag containing about 5,000 seeds.
In the scope of the project, we will collect seeds from different types of wetland habitats at the Lake Cerknica as we have set the goal of collecting 1,300 bags of seeds from species typical for the intermittent lake habitats.