Seeds for survival

Arctic vault holds key to post-doomsday farming

It’s the last place on earth you’d expect to find a stash of seeds. But deep in a frozen mountain on Svalbard island, three million samples from the world’s greatest crops are to be preserved for posterity. The vault, due to be stocked up in late 2007, will hold duplicates of all the seeds in the world’s collections. Kept ‘in trust’ for mankind, the contents of the Norwegian-owned concrete chamber are to be accessed only if disaster strikes.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s alarming estimate is that 75% of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops has already been lost. But over 1,400 refrigerated seed banks are nevertheless safeguarding the vital genes needed by plant breeders to improve modern strains and resist new diseases:

• Africa’s staple crops, yam and cassava, are housed in Nigeria.
• Mexico boasts the largest collection of maize varieties.
• The biggest store of potatoes is in Peru.
• The Middle East’s ancient wheat, chickpea and lentil strains are now in Syria, having been shipped out of Iraq before Saddam’s fall.
• In the US, gardeners are creating a “living legacy” of “heirloom seeds” by growing traditional vegetable varieties offered by Seed Savers Exchange.
• Sussex is home to the world’s biggest seed collection. The Millennium Seed Bank Project stores three million species, including nearly all the UK’s plants, and it aims to preserve 10% of the planet’s dry lands’ flora.
• The international ‘Frozen Ark’ consortium will do the same from animals, freezing genetic tissue samples from the thousands of animals that could soon face extinction [‘Freezing for the future’, GF48]. - Hannah Bullock

*See ‘Five years on’ for India’s take on seed saving.

10 October 2006