Vault contains seeds for the future
A remote Norwegian island is home to a vault of seeds that could be used to feed the world in the event of a catastrophe
IN THIS freezing area in one of the remotest parts of the world reindeer roam freely and polar bears outnumber humans by far. But this place is also home to one of the most important buildings on the planet – a potential saviour should there ever be a global apocalypse.
The towering concrete walls of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault jut out of the mountains of Spitsbergen, a Norwegian island in the Arctic Ocean. It looks like it could be a top-secret lab or a closely guarded bunker – but there’s nothing sinister about it.
Instead what it holds are the seeds of hope for humanity.
Stashed away in the icy tunnels of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault are millions of seeds – onions from Brazil, potatoes from Ireland, several different chilli varieties from the United States and even flowering herbs from a meadow at Prince Charles’ country estate in the United Kingdom.
It’s been dubbed the “doomsday vault” or the “Noah’s Ark of seeds” because it contains seeds that could be grown to feed any survivors of a global cataclysmic event.
Although the doors of the vault stay tightly shut most of the year, they recently swung open to accept 60 000 new samples from all around the world – its biggest deposit ever – taking its collection to more than a million types of seeds and ensuring it now has samples from every country on earth.
“The deposit event is especially timely,” said Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg who attended the ceremony.
Other experts put it more bluntly. As each year brings even more visible effects of climate change and global warming, they say it’s probably just a matter of time before people are travelling to the vault – not to deposit seeds but rather to take them out.
WHY IT EXISTS
The vault was built in the remote Svalbard archipelago in 2008, halfway between Norway and the North Pole, to ensure a reliable backup of the seeds from plants that people rely on for food.
The aim of the vault isn’t to store seeds of endangered plants. Rather, it protects the genetic material of food we eat every
day, as well as the wild relatives of these plants.
So in short, it exists to store seed samples from the world’s crop collections.
This means scientists are free to experiment and create new plant varieties, safe in the knowledge there’s a safe backup of the original.
It also means countries have access to seeds from their indigenous plant species in the event of a disaster.
HOW IT COULD SAVE THE DAY
It was designed to withstand extreme weather, conflict, fire and even nuclear missiles.
And the reason far-off Spitsbergen was chosen as its location is because its permafrost should ensure the seeds remain frozen, even if the vault’s cooling system is disturbed by a power failure.
But the vault’s resilience was called into question in 2016 when the entrance tunnel to the facility flooded due to a combination of heavy rainfall and permafrost melting.
Although the vault remained intact, scientists believe the incident was almost certainly due to human-induced climate change as record high temperatures were recorded in the Arctic that year.
e incident raised questions over the durability of a seed bank that was meant to operate without human intervention.
But after a recent € 20 million (R340m) upgrade to make it more weatherproof, Norway has assured donors that their seeds are safe.
WHO RUNS IT?
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was built by the Norwegian government, which forked out $9m (then about R72m) for its construction, which was completed in 2008.
It’s managed under a tripartite agreement between the Norwegian government, the Global Crop Diversity Trust based in Germany and the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre, which has its headquarters in Sweden.
There are many other seed vaults around the world but the one in Norway is by far the biggest. It relies on donations from other seed banks to ensure it has a copy of plants that are crucial to each region.
It’s a bit like a safety deposit box in a bank. The bank owns the building, but the depositor owns the contents of their box – so the seeds remain the property of the country that submitted them.
Because the vault is situated in such a remote spot there are no permanent staff in residence – instead there are only a couple of days of the year when the doors are opened to accept donations.
All the systems are fully automated, including security, and are monitored remotely so action can be taken if something goes wrong.
HOW ARE THE SEEDS PRESERVED?
The seeds are sealed in specially designed four-ply foil packages that are put in sealed boxes and stored on shelves inside the vault.
The sub-zero temperature inside the vault ensures low metabolic activity, meaning the seeds won’t start germinating. That makes it possible for them to be stored for centuries or even thousands of years.
WHAT TYPES OF SEEDS ARE STORED?
Although the vault sometimes accepts seeds from plants that are purely ornamental, crops that are important to food production and sustainable agriculture are given priority.
Importing genetically modified seeds and their storage in Svalbard are both prohibited by Norwegian law.
HAVE SEEDS EVER BEEN TAKEN OUT OF THE VAULT?
Yes. In 2015 the ongoing civil war in Syria forced researchers to withdraw some seeds from Svalbard to replace those stored in a gene bank in Aleppo, which became inaccessible as a result of the conflict. Although the Aleppo seeds were backed up in 11 seed banks across the world, extracting them from Svalbard was the cheapest option as Syrian scientists went about setting up a new bank in a safer location.
“Surprisingly, they’re in top shape,” says Ahmed Amri, the head of genetic resources at Syria’s International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas.
He says the emergency donation proves that the Svalbard vault isn’t only practical but also important for longterm conservation.
SOURCES: THEVERGE.COM, SEEDVAULT.NO, NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC. COM, CROPTRUST.ORG, NEWSCIENTIST.COM