Establishing local maize seed banks

One of our current activities is an effort to continue tracing the local varieties. Getting their names, document their traits and find ways to ‘rescue’ them in situ and make them available for further use by the wider community. The experiments we currently run in Sauri with the GENO Youth Group learn that there is demand for local maize varieties.

The ideal format as the literature suggests would be a community seed bank. Issues of who runs these seed banks, where they are located, who own the seed, who has access and has user rights; these are open for discussion.