The Germplasm Bank of Wild Species  (here in after referred to as GBOWS) is China’s national effort to comply with the Convention on Biological Diversity to conserve biological resources of wild species. It has been established at Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, managed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (referred to as CAS) as one of its large research infrastructures, in collaboration with Yunnan Provincial Government since March 2005. GBOWS is composed of  a seed bank,  a micro-propagation unit, a DNA bank, a microbial bank (based at Yunnan University) and an animal germplasm bank (based at Kunming Institute of Zoology, CAS), as well as experimental research laboratories for plant genomics and seed biology.

By the end of 2024, over 29,000 species, 332,000 accessions of various types of the germplasm resources have been collected and stored, in which about 99,000 accessions of seeds from more than 11,000 species have been collected and conserved at the seed bank.

GBOWS plays an important role in conservation and research on biological diversity of China, providing the strategic reserve of biological resources for China’s national economic and social sustainable development, and is of great scientific significance looking out the development of China’s biological technological industry in the future.