Ex situ conservation is the preservation of a crop or livestock breed genetic material away from the environment where it evolved, typically as seed collections in a genebank, as live plant collections in a field genebank, or as frozen tissue and semen in cryopreserved storage. It complements in situ conservation by protecting genetic diversity against the loss of the population, habitat or farming tradition that would otherwise carry it forward.
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The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership is a textbook ex situ (seed-bank) conservation facility.
The National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation is the United States' national ex situ seed and germplasm storage facility.
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