The New York Times /
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, in the northern reaches of Norway, is conceived as humanity’s last resort. It’s like the shed at the end of the world: a secure genetic capsule, safe in case some catastrophe (like a meteorite or climate disaster) threatens the planet’s crops.
The deposit It already had about 1.3 million seed samples of about 7 thousand species sent from all over the world. Last week it received around 30 thousand new ones.
The figure itself is significant– This is one of the largest single additions since the vault was created in 2008 (there are usually three deposits a year).
But, according to Asmund Asdalcoordinator of the Norwegian vault, perhaps The most significant thing is the number of so-called gene banks —organizations that store their own seed reserves in locations around the world—that participated in this latest donation.
“It is now more important that many new gene banks from parts of the developing world are depositing valuable and unique genetic material,” he wrote in an email. Some, he said, made their first contributions last week.
external hard drive
Svalbard, Norway, is not the only place where seeds are stored. But it is intended as a safe, an almost completely sealed storage chamber, for use in an emergency.
Most of the work of saving, studying and sharing seeds is done in gene banks.s. These banks function similarly to a computer’s file system, where important documents are stored and can be easily accessed. Svalbard is the external hard drive from which files can be recovered in case of loss.
Asdal explained that, In recent years, the vault’s organizers have expanded its reach.e: they see their work as a race against time, especially to reach developing countries and rural communities, in order to protect themselves from the possibility of gene banks being destroyed by calamities such as bad weather, conflict or breakdowns in the teams.
As Mike Bollinger, CEO of Seed Savers Exchange, a nonprofit seed bank in the United States, says: “If you lose it, it’s gone forever.”
The interest in seed collection, as well as the size of the latest sample pool, reflects “the growing stress, the urgency, the need to act in times of climate change,” said Stefan Schmitz, executive director of the Crop Trust, which manages the Svalbard vault together with the Norwegian government and NordGen, a genetic research center.
Better to prevent
On this occasion, 23 gene banks made contributions to Svalbard’s global seed vaultone of the largest groups to do so in a single window since 2020. According to Crop Trust’s count, there are more than 1,750 gene banks in the world.
“These deposits reflect a widespread awareness that the climate in which humans have thrived for the past 10,000 years has disappeared,” Laurie Parsons, an academic at Royal Holloway, University of London, who studies the effects of climate change, wrote in an email. climate change.
The end of the world, at least as we humans know it, may not originate from a single catastrophe. Gene banks also protect against the possibility of a gradual disappearance. And, as with eggs, it is best not to put the seeds in the same basket.
Among the threats, the climate crisis occupies a prominent place. In 2023, the hottest year on record, some 2.3 billion people faced moderate or severe food insecurity, according to the World Health Organization.
Researchers have also discovered 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 floods or raging heat waves, making it difficult to produce crops.
The most immediate threats come from human conflicts. Fighting has displaced farmers and bombs have devastated crops.
The first removal from the Svalbard vault was made in 2015, after the Syrian civil war devastated a seed bank near Aleppo. The recovered samples were sent to warehouses in Lebanon and Morocco.
This year, some seeds arrived from the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. More will arrive early next year from Sudan, a country ravaged by famine and civil war.
There are other concerns: seeds don’t keep forever. Genetically modified crops, often used in industrial agriculture, have displaced older varieties. This can make local chefs and gardeners, who grow and use heirloom seeds, important cogs in the diversity conservation machinery.
Schmitz believes the future of climate-resilient agriculture could depend on seeds that farmers have overlooked for decades. Chad’s 1,145 reservoirs, for example, have been adapted to withstand extreme climate. They could be useful to researchers trying to grow plants resistant to heat and irregular rainfall.
“Humanity forgot, a little, about the wealth, about what we have,” Schmitz said.
The Arctic is changing
Svalbard (an archipelago that also houses other records of humanity, such as the World Arctic Archive, a major data storage center), is key to conservation.
Last year temperatures rose four times faster than in other parts of the planet. Thawing permafrost caused a small flood at the vault entrance in 2016 (Schmitz said those problems have since been fixed and floodwater pooled away from the seed stores).
Despite the increase in temperatures, seeds should be safe in Svalbard’s protected vaultwhich remains well below freezing even without electricity, Schmitz noted.
He also acknowledged that, although there is no absolute certainty, “I would say that it is the safest place we could find for this task.”
