What is an ex situ collection?
Ex situ conservation is the practice of protecting organisms outside of their native habitat, typically through the collection and storage of germplasm in a genebank. This often takes the form of a seedbank in the case of plants. Techniques such as cryopreservation can also be used for specimens such as fruit stocks, and are also applied to microbes and to animal conservation, where the genetic material may take the form of semen or embryos. Such genebanks are held by a range of individuals, public and private institutions and are also known as ex situ collections.
