FWD 2 HerbalEgram

HerbalEGram: Volume 7, Number 4, April 2010

“Doomsday Vault” Hits half a Million Seeds


The Svalbard Global Seed Vault has reached a milestone of having collected 500,000 types of seeds, making it the most diverse collection of seeds in the world.1,2 This one-of-a-kind vault is built into the side of Platåberget (“plateau”) mountain near the village of Londyearbyen, Svalbard on the Norwegian Spitsbergen Island in the Arctic Ocean.3,4 The permafrost surrounding the mountain that contains the vault is ideal for keeping the seeds cold for up to 200 years if the electricity inside were to fail, and the elevation is ideal for avoiding any projected sea level rise due to climate change, as it is 130 meters/430 feet above sea level.3 These factors earned the vault its “Doomsday” nickname from the media.

The vault opened in February 2008 with the goal of eventually containing 3 million kinds of the world’s seeds.3 Currently it houses almost every agricultural soybean (Glycine max) species developed in the US in the last century4 and countless other medicinal seeds including Astragalus spp., Capsicum spp., Echinacea spp., Hibiscus spp., Mentha spp., Passiflora spp., Rhodiola rosea, Salvia spp., Senna spp., etc.5 The vault stores seeds at the international standard of -18° Celsius (-0.4° Fahrenheit) sealed in 4-ply foil packages, placed in sealed boxes, and stored on shelves.3 Any genebank can send seed samples to the vault free-of-charge and there are approximately 1,400 genebanks in the world. The original seed donations came from 21 international, national, and regional genebanks and a list of current donators can be found here.

Like an insurance policy or safety deposit box, this vault exists so that genebanks around the world can back-up their collections. Genebanks may not be as well protected as this vault, which is surrounded by polar bears, and secured with 4 locked doors: a heavy steel entrance, a second door approximately 115 meters down a tunnel, and 2 air-locked doors which require keys.2,3,4 There are also 3 sets of keys entrusted to different people, which open different levels of the vault.

“Reaching the half million mark brings mixed emotions, because while it shows that the vault at Svalbard is now the golden standard for diversity, it comes at a time when our agriculture systems are really sitting on a knife’s edge,” Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Diversity Trust, which manages the vault along with the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen) and the Government of Norway, told LiveScience.com.2 “If crops and agriculture don’t adapt to climate change, neither will humanity.”

More information is available in an HerbalGram 75 feature, which profiles a few major genebanks.


—Kelly E. Lindner


Photos caption:

©2010 Mari Tefre/Global Crop Diversity Trust.


References

1. Saxton K. Bent Skovmand 1945–2007. HerbalGram. 2007;75:74.

2. Bryner J. ‘Doomsday’ Seed Vault stores 500,000 crops. Livescience.com. March 11, 2010. Available at http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100311/sc_livescience/doomsdayseedvaultstores500000crops. Accessed March 17, 2010.

3. Global Crop Diversity Trust and Svalbard Global Seed Vault Frequently Asked Questions. Global Crop Diversity Trust website. Available at http://www.croptrust.org/documents/web/Svalbard%20and%20Trust%20QandA_Oct08.pdf. Accessed March 17, 2010.

4. MacDougall I. Norway doomsday seed vault hits 1/2 million mark. Associated Press. Available at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100311/ap_on_re_eu/eu_norway_doomsday_vault. Accessed March 17, 2010.

5. Svalbard Global Seed Vault information seed portal. The Nordic Genetic Resources Center, NordGen website. Available at http://www.nordgen.org/sgsv/index.php?app=data_unit&unit=sgsv_template. Accessed March 25, 2010.