The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located in the far reaches of northern Norway, is supposed to be humanity’s last bastion. Imagine it as a post-apocalyptic garden shed. It’s a safe genetic capsule that will be kept safe in case some catastrophe occurs that threatens Earth’s crops (perhaps a meteorite strike or climate disaster).
The vault already contained approximately 1.3 million seed samples of approximately 7,000 species sent from around the world. Approximately 30,000 new items arrived last week.
This number in itself is noteworthy. This is one of the largest one-time additions since the vault opened in 2008 (often three deposits are made per year).
But perhaps more important is the number of so-called genebanks (organizations that store their own seeds in locations around the world) that participated in the donation, said Asmund Arsdal, Norway’s vault coordinator.
“It is now even more important that many new gene banks in developing regions of the world are depositing valuable and unique genetic material,” he wrote in an email. He said some people donated for the first time last week.
Svalbard is not the only place where seeds are stored. But it’s meant to be a safe, a nearly sealed storage area for use in emergencies. Most of the seed saving, research, and sharing work takes place in genebanks. These banks are similar to computer filing systems, where documents are stored but easily accessible. Svalbard is an external hard drive that allows you to restore files if they are lost.
In recent years, the vault’s organizers have expanded the scope of their activities. They see their work as a race against time, especially when working in developing countries and rural areas, to protect gene banks from the possibility of being destroyed by disaster, Arsdal said. . bad weather, conflict, equipment failure, etc.
“If you lose it, it’s gone forever,” said Mike Bollinger, executive director of Seed Savers Exchange, a nonprofit seed bank in the United States.
Stefan Schmitz, executive director of the Crop Trust, which operates the Svalbard vault, said the scale of the recruitment drive and latest sample deposit reflects “the need to act in a time of increasing stress, urgency and climate change. ” reflects this. Norwegian Government and Genetic Research Center NordGen.
Twenty-three genebanks donated this time, making this one of the largest groups to donate through a single point of contact since 2020. According to the Crop Trust, there are more than 1,750 genebanks around the world.
“These deposits reflect a widespread recognition that the climate in which humans have thrived for the past 10,000 years is no longer the same,” said Rory Parsons, a professor of climate change at Royal Holloway, University of London. I wrote by email.
The end of the world, at least as we know it, may not come from a single disaster. Gene banks are also wary of the possibility of gradual extinction. And just like eggs, it’s safer to keep seeds in several baskets.
Among the threats, the climate crisis looms large. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 2.3 billion people faced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2023, the hottest year on record. Researchers also found that more than a third of the world’s tree species are at risk of extinction. Many of the new seeds in the vault come from areas experiencing disastrous flooding and intense heatwaves that have made crop production difficult.
A more pressing threat arises from human conflict. Fighting displaced farmers and bombs destroyed crops.
The first salvage from the Svalbard vault took place in 2015 after a seed bank near Aleppo was destroyed in the Syrian civil war. The recalled samples were shipped to stores in Lebanon and Morocco.
This year, some seeds arrived from Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory. More supplies are expected to arrive early next year from Sudan, which is suffering from famine and civil war.
There are other concerns as well. Seeds cannot be stored forever. Genetically modified crops, commonly used in industrial-scale agriculture, are outpacing older varieties. That could leave local chefs and gardeners who grow and use traditional seeds as key cogs in the system that maintains diversity.
Dr. Schmitz said he believes the future of climate-resilient agriculture may depend on seeds that farmers have overlooked for decades. For example, Chad’s 1,145 mineral deposits are adapted to withstand the harsh climate. These could be useful for researchers trying to grow crops that can tolerate heat and erratic rainfall.
“Little by little, humanity has forgotten the richness and richness of what we have,” Dr. Schmitz said.
Svalbard is an archipelago that is also home to other records about humanity, including the Arctic Web Archive, a major data storage center that is key to preservation.
But the Arctic is changing.
Last year, temperatures in the region rose four times faster than in the rest of the world. Thawing permafrost caused minor flooding at the entrance to the vault in 2016 (Schmitz said those problems have since been resolved and the floodwaters have pooled far from the seed vault).
Despite rising temperatures, Dr. Schmitz pointed out that seeds should be safe in Svalbard’s vaults, which are well below freezing even without electricity.
He acknowledged that nothing is 100 percent certain, but added: “It’s probably the safest place you can find on Earth to undertake such an endeavor.”
