Efisio Mattana

INTRODUCTION Seeds play an important role in plant adaptation to changing environments, contributing to the ecosystems’ integrity and resilience (Aurelle et al., 2022). They help plants reach suitable habitats through dispersal (Muñoz-Gallego et al., 2023), survive unfavorable periods via soil seed banks (Gioria et al., 2020), and germinate when environmental conditions are favorable for seedling survival (Baskin & Baskin, 2014).

Introduction Seed banks have historically served as tools for the preservation of agricultural crops (Linington, 2003). Over time, their scope has expanded to encompass the ex situ conservation of wild plant species, aligning with international biodiversity initiatives such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and its Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (https://www.cbd.int/convention/text). Seed conservation technologies and practices were originally limited to the Global North.

Supporting Information Filename Description nph70000-sup-0001-DatasetS1.txtplain text document, 620 B Dataset S1 Hypothetical tree to run the example described in Supplementary Software. nph70000-sup-0002-Supinfo.docxWord 2007 document , 1.4 MB Fig. S1 Europe botanical continent, botanical countries and seed banks. Fig. S2 Ratio of PDmaxbanked to PDmaxpool across increasing sample sizes, comparing two species selection approaches. nph70000-sup-0003-FigS3.pdfPDF document, 4.5 MB Fig.