Watermelon, strawberry and pumpkin seeds have been sent to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault – a facility situated on a barren archipelago between mainland Norway and the North Pole – for long-term safekeeping. 

The first deposits of 2021 coincide with the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) International Year of Fruits and Vegetables. This deposit includes the seeds of many other crops from genebanks in Africa, Europe and South Asia. 

“The Svalbard Global Seed Vault protects the work and heritage of generations of farmers going back more than 10,000 years and contains the crop diversity to adapt our agriculture to the changing climate,” says Stefan Schmitz, executive director of Crop Trust, which funds The Seed Vault.

“We are losing the Earth’s biodiversity at an accelerating rate. Conserving our crop diversity and making it available for use is a prerequisite for future food security and better food systems. As a backup to genebanks, the Seed Vault plays an essential role in food and nutrition security.”

Housing over one million seed samples
The Seed Vault, often referred to as “The Doomsday Vault”  is the world’s largest and most secure crop diversity collection, opened in 2008 as a backup for genebanks around the world to conserve duplicates of their crop diversity. 

In a worst-case scenario, if a genebank collection is destroyed or becomes inaccessible due to wars or extreme weather events, or if its collection is damaged due to a lack of sufficient funding or accident, the duplicate seeds will still be available for the depositor to retrieve from the Seed Vault and start anew.

In total, five genebanks are depositing almost 6,500 seed samples at the Seed Vault: AfricaRice in Côte d’Ivoire, ICRISAT in India, the Julius Kühn-Institute (JKI) in Germany, SADC Plant Genetic Resources Centre in Zambia and the national genebank in Mali. 

“In a time of climate change, unprecedented loss of biodiversity and a global pandemic, we are humbly grateful for the trust these genebanks show us,” says Lise Lykke Steffensen, executive manager at Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen).

“Their seed samples are invaluable and a prerequisite for our future food security. It is our honor to put them on the frozen shelves of the Seed Vault for safe, free-of-charge and long-term storage.”

The Seed Vault safeguards more than one million seed samples in total, deposited by almost 90 global genebanks over the past 13 years.

Last September, the facility took in a deposit of 2,922 pea seeds from the Germplasm Resources Unit (GRU) for safe, long-term storage.

Cryopreservation of wild species 
The Institute for Breeding Research on Fruit Crops is the coordination center for the German Fruit Genebank (DGO). It oversees the genebank’s apple, cherry, strawberry, pear, plum, Rubus (bramble fruits) and wild fruit networks.

“Our focus is on maintaining collections of fruits native to Central Europe and species that are important for fruit production in Germany,” says Monika Höfer, the DGO coordinator and manager of the institute’s genebank collections.

The Seed Vault already holds a large collection of more than 300 samples of wild strawberry growing in pots. It also use cryopreservation – freezing plant tissue in liquid nitrogen – to back up its collection of wild species that are not conserved in the DGO.

“Last year, we deposited seeds of the wild pear species Pyrus pyraster and the wild apple Malus sylvestris,” Höfer adds. “Both samples came from the Eastern Ore Mountains, which span Germany and the Czech Republic.”

“We welcome the deposits of new seeds of fruits, vegetables and other important food crops to the Seed Vault,” says Norwegian Minister for Agriculture and Food Olaug Bollestad. “This deposit is thus a small, but significant step on our pathway to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”

Pandemic forecast
Despite the ongoing pandemic, the Seed Vault is scheduled to open twice more this year, in May and in October.

“COVID-19 is putting increased pressure on genebanks around the world. However, these institutions were still able to deposit their seeds for safeguarding, a testament to the resilience and importance of multilateral cooperation,” says Schmitz. 

“Amid this great upheaval are signs that positive change is still possible, and that the global community can continue to work together to solve urgent crises.” 

At the start of the pandemic, FoodIngredientsFirst spoke with The Seed Vault alongside other world leading seed banks to further explore the role of these facilities in conserving crop diversity during times of global crises.