Great Collections: Svalbard Global Seed Vault

According to an article from Time magazine, over the past 50 years, agricultural practices have changed dramatically. Although technological advances have facilitated large-scale crop production and increased crop yields, biodiversity has decreased to the point that now only about 30 crops provide 95 percent of human food-energy needs. Only 10 percent of the rice varieties that China used in the 1950s are still used today, for example. The U.S. has lost over 90 percent of its fruit and vegetable varieties since the 1900s. This leaves remaining food supplies more susceptible to threats such as diseases, drought, and climate change. Staples such as wheat and corn are likely to be among the most vulnerable to wild weather, pests, and disease.

The idea of warehousing seeds to preserve the genetic make-up of crops important or unique to a region is not new. There are more than 1,700 genebanks worldwide holding collections of food crops for safekeeping. Yet, time has shown them vulnerable to natural catastrophes, war, climate change, and poor agricultural management. Something as mundane as a poorly functioning freezer can ruin an entire collection. Crop extinction is as irreversible as the extinction of a dinosaur, animal, or any form of life. A safer, longer-term solution was required.

The idea of an underground seed vault as an insurance policy against the challenges being faced by agri-growers and traditional genebanks was conceived in the 1980s by Cary Fowler, a former executive director of the Crop Trust, but the plan to build one was accelerated after an International Seed Treaty negotiated by the U.N. was signed in 2001.

Built in an abandoned coal mine, the Vault, which opened in February 2008, is owned and administered by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food on behalf of the Kingdom of Norway, and managed by the Crop Trust as a service to the world community. The Crop Trust is the only organization whose sole mission is to ensure humanity conserves and makes available the world’s crop diversity for future food security. Theirs is a work in progress with a daunting road ahead as participating countries work with their nation’s genebanks to source or duplicate the seeds they can contribute to this global “back up” initiative.

Dubbed the “doomsday” vault, Svalbard’s three underground chambers have the capacity to store 4.5 million varieties of crops (each variety contains on average 500 seeds), representing every important crop variety available in the world today, for hundreds to thousands of years as a backup for the world’s crop collections. This preservation endeavor is consistent with the philosophy that genetic resources are global assets.

Twice a year, the Vault opens for deposits. Currently, it is holding more than 1,000,000 samples, originating from almost every country in the world. Its seeds range from unique varieties of major African and Asian food staples such as maize, rice, wheat,

cowpea, and sorghum, to European and South American varieties of eggplant, lettuce, barley, and potato. In fact, the Vault already holds the most diverse collection of food crop seeds in the world.

One of the most historically significant deposits of seeds inside the vault comes from a collection in St. Petersburg’s Vavilov Research Institute, which originates from one of the first collections in the world. During the siege of Leningrad, about a dozen scientists barricaded themselves in the room containing the seeds to protect them from hungry citizens and the surrounding German army.

As the siege dragged on, a number of them eventually died from starvation. Despite being surrounded by seeds and plant material, they steadfastly refused to save themselves by eating any of it, such was their conviction about the importance of the seeds to aid Russia’s recovery after war and to help protect the future of humankind. One of the scientists, Dmitri Ivanov, is said to have died surrounded by bags of rice.

It would be difficult to find a place more remote than the icy wilderness of Svalbard. It is the farthest north you can fly on a commercial airline, and apart from the nearby town of Longyearbyen, it is a vast white expanse of frozen emptiness.

At first blush, its location would seem an odd choice for those unfamiliar with this remote location, but for designers and project participants, its location was ideal for long-term seed storage: For one thing, the area is geographically stable and the humidity levels are low. For another, the Vault is well above sea level at 426 feet, protected from ocean flooding according to worst-case scenario sea level rises. Another advantage is the permafrost, which keeps the vault at -3 degrees Celsius, a naturally occurring environment that provides a cost-effective and fail-safe method for conserving seeds. Lastly, it is remote but accessible.

“It is away from the places on earth where you have war and terror, everything maybe you are afraid of in other places. It is situated in a safe place,” says Bente Naeverdal, a property manager who oversees the day-to-day operation of the vault.

Participation in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault endeavor has given the United States a visible presence in the worldwide effort to safeguard the genetic diversity that underpins our food supply. It has also been a way for ethnic groups to preserve for prosperity foods indigenous to their culture and their roots.

In 2020, The Cherokee Nation became the first US Tribe to deposit culturally important crop seeds in the Svalbard Vault. The Cherokee Nation’s Office of Natural Resources collected nine samples of Cherokee heirloom crop seeds, including the Cherokee White Eagle Corn – a blue and white corn with a red cob that gets its unusual moniker because some kernels appear to display an image of a white eagle. White Eagle Corn is the tribe’s most sacred corn and is used in important cultural activities. Other seeds sent to the Seed Vault include Cherokee Long Greasy Beans, Cherokee Trail of Tears Beans, Cherokee Turkey Gizzard black and brown beans, and Cherokee Candy Roaster Squash, along with several more varieties of corn. All nine Cherokee crop varieties sent to Svalbard predate European colonization.

The National Seed Vault has plenty of room left and the initiative is ongoing, but as all involved understand, time may not always be on their side.