Collecting Seeds

• The most obvious objective for seed banks is collecting seeds. Many seed banks collect plants specific to their areas, while others attempt to catalog seeds from every plant in the world. Their reasons differ, but one reason generally remains constant, and that is to prevent the disappearance of plants if they should go extinct in the wild. As long as the bank has a few seeds, the plant is never fully extinct.
  
  

Helping Researchers

• Another primary objective of many seed banks is to help researchers. Many of our most potent and advanced medicines today come from plants, such as periwinkle, an Amazonian plant used to treat childhood leukemia. As long as plants are used in medicine, seed banks will continue to offer their seeds to researchers who need them. This prevents the researchers from having to hunt down the plants themselves, saving time, money and energy.
  
  

Helping Farmers

• Another less known objective of seed banks is to help the world's farmers. Seed banks do much more than gather, ship and store seeds. They are also leading the charge in genetic plant improvement. Through offering farmers larger, healthier and more populous crops, they indirectly help feed the world's growing population by breeding plants that can feed more people cheaply and quickly. Such advancements help not only the population in general, but also help raise money for the seed banks.
  
  

Helping Conservationists

• A fourth primary objective of seed banks is to raise general awareness of conservation efforts throughout the world. Whether or not the conservationists are involved directly with the bank, the banks try to create partnerships with various other organizations to help them. This can mean public announcement campaigns about the banks' missions or it can mean signing agreements with small communities to help gather seeds or engage in other activities to shed light on the entire conservation effort.
  
  

Helping Seed Banks

• The final objective of most seed banks is to perpetuate and advance the mission of seed banks everywhere. Since most seed banks aren't competitive with one another, they generally are willing to share not only their vast wares of seeds, but also their mechanisms for storage. Such technology information can include the perfect temperature for storing seeds, how to avoid rot, how to store certain special seeds, etc. In general, seed banks help one another so that they can stay open for years.