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Seed banks are a way for a community or group to maintain a collection of seeds in one place. They are based on a group of people who want to store and exchange seed in a local area. The bank receives, tests, and circulates seeds and keeps information about them. These banks often include a place to store seeds, a record, and the boxes and bags to do germination tests. A seed bank does not charge for its seeds, buy seed, grow a lot of seed or sell seed to companies.
A record is kept on each kind of seed (tomato, carrot, onion). All of the information on each kind is recorded. This includes a list of the number of seeds, what variety of seed it is, who collected the seed, where it was collected, the date collected, the percentage and date of germination tests and who has taken that seed. These records are useful for many reasons. If you want to find a certain type of seed the bank no longer has you can find a record of who took seeds this year or if you want to know about how a seed did in the field, the contact information for a farmer who has grown the seed is on record.
Usually members give and take seeds equally that way the supply is never depleted. The seeds are ideally kept no longer than a year. A seed bank may also try out new seeds to determine if the seed is right for the area or to increase the seeds in the seed bank.