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Landraces are varieties or populations of crop plants, often highly variable in appearance, whose genetic structure is shaped by farmers’ selection practices and natural processes over generations of cultivation. In addition to the private value they generate for the farmers who grow them, landraces have social value because plant breeders use them as sources of novel alleles (gene types) or gene combinations to improve the crops that produce the food, feed, and fiber on which societies depend. Over the course of this century, the products of modern, plant-breeding programs have replaced the landraces of major cereals in many regions of the world. Fearing the loss of valuable genes, conservationists have launched efforts to collect and store seed samples of landraces for future use in ex situ (out of place of origin) germ plasm banks. Stored in refrigerated vaults, these seed samples are literally “frozen” on the …