May 5, 2026 · 29 min · 14 segments
In this episode of Nature In A Nutshell, we’re joined by Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) expert, Dr Julia Baker from Mott MacDonald, to unpack the latest BNG developments and what they could mean for…
So researchers at the John Innes Centre in Norwich have adapted something called the embryo extraction method and found that it can be used to rapidly speed up the germination of European ash seeds.
So the process of ash seed germination can apparently take up to six years, but with this new method, the process can be reduced down to just one week, which is quite a reduction.
So the technique itself involves carefully extracting the embryo from the seed coat using a knife and tweezers and then placing it on an agar nutrient jelly, which sounds delightful, to give the whole process a boost.
I kind of get the sense that the whole issue with ash dieback, people feel quite personally the loss of trees in their local environment, as well as it being a more broader ecological concern.
I know I myself recently witnessed the cutting down of several local ash that had been stricken by the disease and were subsequently thought to pose a threat to people walking under them.
This is a welcome development, really, and the hope is that this method could, with some adaptations, be adopted by landowners, conservation volunteers, and even gardeners who want to try and preserve tree populations by creating families of these ashes that have been propagated from mother trees that have shown resistance to ash dieback.
So researchers at the John Innes Centre in Norwich have adapted something called the embryo extraction method and found that it can be used to rapidly speed up the germination of European ash seeds.
So the process of ash seed germination can apparently take up to six years, but with this new method, the process can be reduced down to just one week, which is quite a reduction.
So the technique itself involves carefully extracting the embryo from the seed coat using a knife and tweezers and then placing it on an agar nutrient jelly, which sounds delightful, to give the whole process a boost.
I kind of get the sense that the whole issue with ash dieback, people feel quite personally the loss of trees in their local environment, as well as it being a more broader ecological concern.
I know I myself recently witnessed the cutting down of several local ash that had been stricken by the disease and were subsequently thought to pose a threat to people walking under them.
This is a welcome development, really, and the hope is that this method could, with some adaptations, be adopted by landowners, conservation volunteers, and even gardeners who want to try and preserve tree populations by creating families of these ashes that have been propagated from mother trees that have shown resistance to ash dieback.
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