Access to CWR
Collecting seeds
Areas in which CWR occur are not always open to the general public, which means that permission is needed from the owner or manager for access and/or sampling. Furthermore, it should be noted that plant species may be legally protected according to the Environmental and Planning Act (Omgevingswet). This protection implies that everything that is harmful to the protected species is legally prohibited.
CGN
Seed samples of CWR may form part of the gene bank collection of CGN, and can be made available for plant breeding, research or education. Online searches for CWR and requests for seed samples can be performed on CGN’s website. When requesting seed samples from CGN, the standard material transfer agreement (SMTA) needs to be accepted. The current CGN collecting programme for Dutch CWR serves the development of a safety back-up collection for in situ conservation, which means that for now seed samples of this programme are not available for distribution. However, CGN can act as an intermediary between field owners and organizations that are interested in CWR. Terms and conditions for access to populations and sampling can then be discussed between the field owner and applicant.
Other actors
Several providers of seeds of Dutch wild plant species exist in the Netherlands, including Biodivers, de Cruydt-Hoeck, de Bolderik en NL Bloeit!. To collect seeds in the Netherlands, CGN cooperates with ‘The Living Archive’ (het Levend Archief), an initiative that aims to develop a national seed collection of the Dutch flora for conservation and use.