Professor W. John Cram s article Tibet s Seeds Must Be Stored as Climate Changes, was published under the category of Correspondence on Nature 452 6 March 2008 , according to Statistical Data of Chinese S&T Papers issued by Institute of Scientific & Technical Information of China. Professor W. John Cram was on the faculty at School of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology. His article marked the very first time when researcher under the professor title of HUST debuted their article in Nature.
This article delineated the grim situation of botanical resources protection in Tibet. With the melting of glaciers and icebergs, 6,000 strains of highland plants in Qinghai-Tibet area have been placed in peril. No botanical garden has exercised any protection for the seed resources in Tibet s nature reserve, despite that its volume dominates 1/3 of the total nationwide. The Kew Millennium Seed Bank in England accommodates three strains of seeds characteristic in Tibet while the largest seed bank nationwide located in Kun Ming preserve not a single one.
Upon the conclusion of inspection in Tibet in 2007, Professor W. John Cram returned to HUST to piece together the aforementioned findings and produced this article which was published in Nature afterwards, according to the introduction of Professor He Guangyuan, head of China UK HUST RRes Genetic Engineering and Genomics Joint Laboratory, Huazhong University of Science and Technology. He further indicated that crop seeds have been under effective protection in China; scant attention, however, has been directed to seeds of non-agricultural types. This publication therefore brought about far-reaching effects on the establishment of an all-embracing botanical resources database and the protection of rare species in China. Moreover, seeds protection in China thereupon captivated extensive concerns from the whole world.
Unfortunately, 20 December 2008, only a few months after the publication, saw the last breath of Professor W. John Cram. He died of illness.
Professor W. John Cram was born in Anlu, Hubei Province in 1940. His father was a missionary; his mother practiced medicine in the locality. He has strong bond with China, since he spent his childhood here. In 2005, HUST appointed him as a full-time professor researching into botany in China UK HUST RRes Genetic Engineering and Genomics Joint Laboratory.
