Where no trees grow, the seeds of the future rest:
AVRDC - The World Vegetable Center sends seed to the newly opened Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway

Call it a new dawn: On February 26, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on Spitsbergen Island in Norway officially opened – and though the island will see no direct sunlight for at least another week, the future was suddenly brighter, though not much warmer. 

Dr. Thomas Lumpkin, parting Director General of AVRDC - The World Vegetable Center , participated in the vault’s dedication ceremony along with 149 other guests from 33 countries. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, the Prime Minister and Agriculture Minister of Norway , 2004 Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai and FAO Director General Dr. Jacques Diouf were among the distinguished speakers.

AVRDC - The World Vegetable Center sent 7,350 accessions from our collections to be stored in the vault. Our seed boxes were highlighted in the ceremony along with boxes from major international agriculture institutions like CIMMYT, IRRI and CIAT, and they were among the first group of boxes placed in storage. 

“I’m thrilled and excited that it’s finally happening,” said Dr. Liwayway Engle, head of the center’s Genetic Resources and Seed Unit (GRSU). “People have been talking about this project since the 1980s. It’s been a concerted global effort, and that’s perhaps the most gratifying thing about the vault. Governments, NGOs, regional and national seed banks, private companies -- so many people are concerned and involved; there’s been real recognition of the importance of protecting germplasm.”

Seeds of indigenous vegetables from our regional centers in Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central Asia were added to the vault. One in 10 of all indigenous plants are used as sources of food, particularly in developing countries, where many of those species are now threatened with extinction.

Dr. Engle and her team began preparing seeds in mid-November 2007. NordGen provided the laminated aluminum pouches and the hard black plastic storage containers. “We were asked to submit enough seed for two regeneration cycles,” says Dr. Engle. “And they have asked us to refrain from requesting our collections for at least 10 years if possible.”

The process of filling the vault will continue over the next 3 to 10 years. GSRU will renew more accessions and ship more seed to Svalbard until most of the germplasm represented in our collection is also stored at Svalbard . Given Taiwan ’s vulnerability to earthquakes and typhoons, the value of having a duplicate collection is immeasurable.

“We have a ‘black box’ arrangement with the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre (NordGen),” said Dr. Engle. “We send them our sealed black boxes for storage in the vault, and those boxes can’t be opened by anyone but us. Only we can decide when to open the boxes, and then they will be shipped back to the center.”

Dr Engle notes the vault has the added benefit of consolidating information now stored in regional and national gene banks in a central database. “The seed vault has raised the profile of germplasm,” she said. “People are beginning to understand just how important it is to conserve the diversity of the world’s crops for the future.”

The seed vault, a partnership of Norway , the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen), and the Global Crop Diversity Trust, stores duplicates of seeds from collections worldwide. If seeds are lost for any reason -- natural disasters, accidents, war, power failure, or even funding cuts -- the collections can be reestablished using the germplasm from Svalbard. Seed banks destroyed recently in the Iraq war and by Typhoon Xangsane in the Philippines show just how vital it is to have a backup.

Located more than 950 kilometers north of mainland Norway , the frozen, treeless Svalbard archipelago is the northernmost point in the world to be serviced by scheduled commercial flights. The ability to hold the cold is one reason why Spitsbergen , the largest island of the archipelago, was selected for the vault.

An elongated concrete tower protruding from Plataaberget Mountain marks the vault’s entrance. It’s capped by an art installation created from steel, mirrors and prisms to reflect the polar light in the summer; fiber-optic cables woven throughout the design give off a green glow in winter. 

A 125-meter-long steel-lined tunnel leads to three separate, secure chambers for storing seeds, each reached through a frost-covered metal door. Each of the 10-by-30-meter vaults has blue and orange metal shelves that can hold 1.5 million seed packages. Anyone seeking access to the seeds will have to pass through four locked doors: the heavy steel entrance doors, a second door approximately 115 meters down the tunnel, and finally the two keyed air-locked doors. Keys are coded to allow access to different levels of the facility.

The vault has space for seeds as big as coconuts or as small as the period at the end of this sentence. Some of the seeds are from early cultivars and ancestors that no longer grow anywhere on Earth, as farmers have stopped planting them or their habitat has been lost to modern agricultural practices.

Photo courtesies: Global Crop Diversity Trust; Thomas A. Lumpkin