Abstract | Seed banking by design: The New Zealand Indigenous flora seed bank

Arrival of Myrtle Rust has increased interest, and heightened urgency to identify solutions and strategies that will limit, if not eliminate, risk of loss of indigenous species, such as Pohutukawa, Rata, Manuka and Kanuka. Seed storage offers hope for preservation of the unique biodiversity of these plants, many of which are found in single locations.

The NZ Indigenous Flora Seedbank aims to provide a framework of solutions and strategies to preserve and conserve all the biodiversity indigenous to New Zealand, and mitigate against decline or extinction due to events such as land use, climate change, disease and incursions.

This Seedbanks approach is to form partnerships with Government agencies and ministries, university researchers, non-government organisations (NGOs) and importantly with iwi and other communities throughout New Zealand. This will generate the critical mass of interest and grow capability and commitment to sustain the seedbank as a widely supported long-term solution that:

Turns every seed into a plant, and wins hearts and minds New Zealand-wide as essential insurance against long-term flora biodiversity loss

The presentation will describe the design-led approach that will support creation of a Strategic Model to implement into action the following five actions and processes to accomplish the Seed Banks core aims and objectives:

1. Iwi and broader community engagement, learning and regional development, within a national framework;
2. Multi-disciplinary, multi-agency, iwi and community involvement to carry out seed bank tasks and activities;
3. Systematically-coordinate activities and agile responses to urgent indigenous plant species risks and threats
4. Identify and overcome barriers to collaboration, locally, regionally, nationally; and
5. Create a resource and process that will ensure the preservation and conservation of the Country’s unique flora biodiversity - genetic material, knowledge, context and cultural significance, in perpetuity.

Bio | Kate Nolan

I work with people to: build teams; manage internal and external research and business relationships, create opportunities for engagement and communication; facilitate using design thinking processes, support project concept development, inspire through a ‘solutions identification’ focus; and generate opportunities to explore cross service and discipline integration to support Research and Business development opportunities.

I work within the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. My work includes building inter, cross and trans-disciplinary teams across Massey University as well as working with external research partners. I provide leadership to research teams, service providers and external partners, as they work together to achieve their goals through team projects, initiatives, mediation and coordinated service delivery. This work has involved engaging with all levels of the university community including students, research academics at all levels, senior leadership team and the full range of professional service areas across the university. In addition I liaise with external funders, ministries, industry and other stakeholder groups.

Key objectives of this work are to:

• Support the creation of resilient and sustainable research communities and teams
• Build research capability, capacity and synergy by connecting researchers across discipline areas with each other and key stakeholder groups
• Evolve research concepts and projects and support research teams to deliver cutting edge research and business development opportunities