Conservation in a national seed bank should be applied not only to species related to agriculture but also to any endangered or rare wild native species. To widen the scope of the IGB's activities in this direction, the Ministry of Environment is about to become one of its controlling ministries.
In the future, all holdings will be handled and reorganized for deposition in a new storage facility. Seed collections for ex-situ conservation will be enlarged with a focus on endangered populations. In parallel, country-wide collections of the most important wild relatives of crop plants will be made, irrespective of an immediate danger they may face. This is necessary for an adequate representation of these species in the seed bank. A search will be made for in-situ conservation sites. Preference will be given to sites in which a number of species can be conserved simultaneously. It is very much hoped that in the near future the IGB can become part of a regional network, in which Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian gene banks collaborate in studying and perpetuating the plant-genetic resources of our area.