With seeds over 800 years old, students revive extinct plant

It's not uncommon to bump into a beautiful garden out there. In addition to all the beauty, some of them can bring good news. At a university in Winnipeg, Canada, students managed to plant a type of pumpkin that had been extinct for hundreds of years.

It all started when, on an archaeological dig, a small clay vase estimated to be 800 years old was discovered. Inside, archaeologists have found preserved seeds from a very old pumpkin.

Students at the Canadian University of Mennonite were able to plant the seeds, which were successfully grown. Now they want to take the seeds from the sprouting plant and plant new seedlings, reversing extinction. Thanks to an indigenous ancestor who put the seeds in a pot hundreds of years ago, this kind of pumpkin will not be lost in history.

The coordinator of the Learning Garden in Winnipeg sees this achievement as much more than a victory for science: "This fruit is representative of a tribe, of a large community where everyone had a home and food, which is a right of citizenship, " said Etkin.

The fruits and vegetables we have access to in supermarkets, for example, are only a fraction of the wide variety that exists. Therefore, this discovery raises the importance of seed preservation and management in order to ensure the survival of different species worldwide.

At least in the last 100 years, there has been a large decrease in the variety of crops grown as growers prefer to focus on high yielding species that are able to travel long distances. As a result, it turned out that we are close to losing so many plant varieties that many people are devoting their work to bringing back those that many may have forgotten.

With the creation of seed banks, species are being saved from extinction, and future generations will be able to learn about fruits and vegetables like this colorful corn:

Yes, this awesome, multicolored corn is real and edible! It is the result of yet another work by someone who has used his time to save seeds over the generations. Glass Gem is a very old variety of maize, with seeds with a dazzling diversity of colors.

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