My group is planning to store plant seeds for a long period (>1 year) in vacuum-sealed bags. Does anyone have experience with or know of a method for vacuum-sealing and storing plant material long-term?
Gene banks have lots of expertise in this. To maintain viability, usual practice is to keep them cool, and to reduce moisture content fairly slowly to a low limit (I think 5%) by keeping them for some time in a cool drying room and monitoring the moisture content. Once they are dry enough, the usual practise is to store in freezers, rather than vacuum sealed. I guess vacuum sealing will tend to draw more of the moisture out? I would have a look at something like this:
http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/agphome/documents/PGR/genebank/Genebankstandards-Nov2011english-2b.pdf
The thing is, this is part of an experiment rather than an actual storage method, at least at this point. The viability of the seeds is of less importance than the ability to isolate non-degraded protein from them.
I would be wary of removing all oxygen. Although the respiration rate of dormant seeds is relatively low, completely depriving them of oxygen may result in death, or at least damaging fermentation if oxygen deprivation is prolonged. The time it takes for damage to occur will depend on species and environmental temperature as well as moisture content.
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