seedstock

or seed stock

[ seed-stok ]

noun
  1. seed, tubers, or roots selected and kept for planting.

  2. animals, especially pedigreed livestock, maintained for breeding purposes.

  1. the animals needed to replenish a population, as after hunting or fishing.

Origin of seedstock

1
First recorded in 1925–30; seed + stock

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use seedstock in a sentence

  • The seed stock for planting the following year should be selected and stored separately in a small bin.

  • Seedsmen practise selecting a few fine, hard heads, from which to raise their seed stock.

  • The seed stock of big-horn sheep now alive in the United States aggregates a pitifully small number.

    Our Vanishing Wild Life | William T. Hornaday
  • A perpetual close season was put on mountain sheep just in time to save a dozen small flocks as seed stock.

    Our Vanishing Wild Life | William T. Hornaday
  • Across these swelling floods one craft had been safely borne; in it was stored the seed-stock of a new world of man and beast.