I was fascinated many years ago upon learning about a place in Norway that collects and preserves the world's seeds. This place is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, and it provides long-term storage and protection of the world's agricultural history and diversity. It is located in Spitsbergen, Norway's Svalbard archipelago, between mainland Norway and the North Pole.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault officially opened and started collecting seeds in 2008. It has the capacity to store 4.5 million seed samples, with each sample containing an average of 500 seeds. Any country or organization can send seeds to store here.
What makes this vault important when there are so many seed banks around the world? This seed vault serves as a worldwide insurance for food supply. Dubbed the "doomsday" vault, we don't need to imagine a doomsday futuristic scenario where seed banks are catastrophically destroyed. In 2015, seeds were withdrawn for the first time to replace a seed bank that was destroyed near the Syrian city of Aleppo, as a result of the civil war. The seeds were grown, and then redeposited back into the vault.
The latest news about the vault is that Norway plans to spend about 100 million Norwegian crowns to upgrade it, following water flow into the entrance of the tunnel to the vault in 2016 due to an unexpected thawing of permafrost.
As worldwide threats to plant diversity intensifies from habitat destruction, invasive species, war, climate change, and natural disasters, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault becomes ever more important to preserve to ensure food supply for the future.
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