Guest
Australian scientist Dr Ken Street, aka the ’Seed Hunter’, spends his life searching for the tiny seeds that could play a role in helping food producers around the world. This film follows Dr Ken, the ’Indiana Jones’ of agriculture, on a journey from the drought-ravaged farms of Australia, to the heart of the Middle East, to the mountains of Tajikistan as he hunts for elusive wild chickpea that can survive temperatures of 40 degrees above and below zero. Sounds simple enough until you realise that land clearing, urbanisation and modern farming systems have all but wiped out these ancient food sources. The rare wild chickpea’s tough, resilient genes could help transform the modern chickpea variety, enabling it to be grown by more people. At journey’s end, Ken travels deep into the Arctic to deliver his precious bounty of seed to the impenetrable ’doomsday vault’, built as a back-up for the world’s seed supply of every food type known to humankind.
