ABSTRACT
The ambiguous material qualities of food and seeds should make effective control of heritage meaning and resources more difficult to achieve, according to what we understand about heritage discourse. The agreement or acceptance of the role of expert guardians in controlling access to genetic resources and their influence over classification and meaning rests on a consensus among many people. Caring for a collection is established in Western heritage culture as an expression of the duty of care ethos, embedded in the museology of the nineteenth century. In accounts of guardianship by expert bodies, the value of the seeds or tissues stored is often expressed using the metaphor of ‘treasure’. There is a tension between preserving heritage remains in accordance with specialist regimes of heritage management, and catering to the general public, to whom the heritage must be communicated in ways that appeal to them.
