[Blahah]

Seed banks are mostly self-refreshing. Seed viability decline during storage is measured and modelled for. A sample of seeds is taken out of storage and grown to breed a new batch of seeds after an amount of time based on the rate of decline of that sample.

So a batch that loses 20% viability every 5 years will be regrown to seed after a shorter amount of time than one that loses 2% viability every 5 years.

Source: was a seed germination and dormancy researcher at the Millennium Seed Bank

[quietbritishjim]

I'm the context of this comment chain, you're agreeing with the parent comment with a tone of disagreement. Yes, seed banks need periodic attention (whether you call that refreshing or self-refreshing or whatever), so you couldn't stick a bunch of seeds on the moon and just leave them there.

[ahazred8ta]

The proposed lunar seed bank is cryogenic, not room temperature.

[sholladay]

How does that work with apple trees and such?

My understanding is you could have a fantastic apple seed, grow it into a fantastic tree with fantastic fruit, but then the next generation grown from its seeds might be nearly inedible. And that all the delicious fruit we eat comes from grafted trees as a result of this.

Also, more generally, lots of trees are huge, so presumably you aren’t growing them in a cave or mine shaft. How is that handled?

[nsxwolf]

What is the meaning of "self-refreshing" there, though? That sounds like a lot of work.

[Arch-TK]

Yeah but even if the viability decline was quite slow on the moon, you would still have to refresh _eventually_, at least that's how I understand what you wrote.

Are we going to have robots on the moon doing the refreshing? That would be cool.

[josefx]

If you have everything on the moon needed to grow a large amount of plants couldn't you also support a human or two?