The Germplasm Bank of Wild Species Project (here in after referred to as “the Germplasm Bank”) 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-scale science and technology infrastructures, in collaboration with Yunnan Provincial Government since March 2005. The project 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, Chinese Academy of Sciences), as well as experimental research laboratories for plant genomics and seed biology.
      By the end of 2017, 21,666 species, 225,522 accessions of various types of the germplasm resources have been collected and stored, in which 74,738 accessions of seeds from 9,837 species belonging to 228 family and 1990 genera have been collected and conserved at the seed bank.
      The establishment of the Germplasm Bank plays an important role in conservation and researchon 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.