Biofacts, Bioprospecting, Biobanking: A Reality Check of Seed Banks

Agriculture produces hybrid forms of nature and technology, philosophically termed “biofacts”. As agriculture is the prototype of culture as such, it may be a fruitful candidate for investigating TechnoScienceSocieties. Every making of a biofact starts by controlling the seed. The chapter focuses on the material objects of technological change, i.e. high tech plants, and the premodelling of their beginnings by seed or gene banks. Seed banks are introduced as large technological systems that function as infrastructures of both agriculture and bioeconomy. The cases of Germany and Italy exemplify some of the historical shifts seed banks faced regarding technology, norms and time politics, and how these shifts influenced the concept of “seed”, e.g. by cryoconservation technologies and implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).