• The objective of biodiversity convention includes three objectives:

a) Conservation of biodiversity

b) Sustainable use of its components

c) Fair and equitable sharing of the benefits

• The various methods of biodiversity conservation include:

1. Insitu conservation:

• Refers to conservation of organism in its own environment.
• Ensures future availability of the required genetic resources.
• Allows evolution to continue and new gene combination would appear.
• Originality of the material may be lost due to environmental hazards.
• Examples: Natural Parks, Biosphere reserve or gene sanctuary.

2. Ex situ conservation:

• Refers to Conserving organism outside of their natural environment or in artificial environment.
• Includes:

a) Botanical garden:

• Defined as public garden which maintain collection of live plants mainly for study, scientific research conservation and education.
• Preserve world’s plant diversity by

i) Growing large collection of endangered plants and holding them safely in seed banks.

ii) Reintroducing plants to wild as part of species recovery projects.

iii) Documenting and recording the plants and their characteristics.

iv) Promoting environmental awareness

v) Providing expertise and training to grow plants

vi) Helping to conserve natural vegetation by maintaining natural reserve as well as study, monitor and conserve plants and their ecology in wild.

b) Seed banks:

• Suitable for sexually reproducing plants whose seeds are suitable for long term storage.
• On the basis of storability, seed are two types:

i) Orthodox seed: Moisture content 5% or low.

ii) Recalcitrant seed: Moisture content 12-30%.

• On the basis of seed storage conditions, seed can be classified as:

i) Base collection: at -20⁰C with 5% moisture content for 5-10 years.

ii) Active collection: At 0⁰C with 5-8% moisture for 10-15 years.

iii) Working collection: At 5-10⁰C with 10% moisture content for 3-5 years.

c) Field seed banks:

• Refers to an area of land in which collections of growing plants have been assembled in order to maintain the widest applicability of genetic diversity.
• Each species are conserved and made available for breeding, reintroduction, research and other purpose.

d) In Vitro storage:

• Refers to conservation of plants in an artificial growth medium in laboratory conditions.

e) Cryopreservation:

• Cryopreservation is the use of very low temperatures to preserve structurally intact living cells and tissues.
• When plants are exposed to ultra-low temperature(-196⁰C), cellular metabolic activities are arrested due to unavailability of liquid water.

Techniques of cryopreservation

i) Freezing (slow down 5⁰C to -196⁰C)

ii) Storage ( -72⁰C to -196⁰C)

iii) Thawing (bringing down to room temperature slowly)

iv) Reculture

f) DNA Banks:

• To store leafy shoots (DNA rich material) or extracted DNA in liquid nitrogen.
• Have numerous uses like

i) Molecular phylogentics

ii) Production of transgenic plants

iii) Study of enzymes structure and function

iv) Genomic probes for research laboratories.

g) Zoo

• Refers to unique place, which hold collection of live, and in most cases endangered animals.
• Safeguard the long-term survival of wild animals and help for research, recreation and conservation education to the visitors.