Celebrating the 10^th Anniversary of the Svalbard Seed Vault

The World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg) participated in the 10th Anniversary Celebration of the Global Seed Vault and Seed Vault Summit in Svalbard on 25-27 February 2018. Yu-yu Chou, germplasm curator, and Maarten van Zonneveld, genebank manager, participated in the celebrations on behalf of WorldVeg.

The Seed Vault maintains backups of genebank collections from around the world. Should a collection be destroyed because of a natural disaster or human conflict, the seed in the Svalbard vault can be used to rebuild the collection. For example, the genebank of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) in Aleppo, Syria could no longer function due to the ongoing war in the country. Seed ICARDA previously stored in the Svalbard vault was used to regenerate their collection of invaluable wheat and barley landraces, which otherwise would have been lost forever for breeding and crop production.

WorldVeg has been an active participant in the Svalbard Seed Vault from the beginning and deposited its first box of seeds in 2008.  For the 10th Anniversary, the WorldVeg genebank team prepared three boxes of seeds containing 1,004 accessions of 21 vegetable species and shipped them to Svalbard. Over the past decade, WorldVeg has deposited a total of 48 boxes of accessions in the Seed Vault, representing about 24% of its collection.

“It’s important to duplicate our collection to safeguard this precious resource,” said Maarten van Zonneveld. “WorldVeg will increase the percentage of its collection stored in the Seed Vault over the coming years.”

During the Seed Vault Summit, genebank managers and curators added seed to the Seed Vault Foundation Stone, a glass cylinder that was partially filled with seed to commemorate the decision made by Norway and other countries to build the vault in 2006. On behalf of WorldVeg, Maarten placed African nightshade and African eggplant seed in the cylinder to emphasize the importance of protecting and using vegetable diversity for nutrition security and healthy diets. The cylinder is now stored at the Svalbard Museum.

The Seed Vault Summit was an excellent opportunity to interact with other genebank managers and curators around the world as well as with scientists from the Crop Trust and the International Treaty of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

During the final ceremonial activity, Yu-yu and Maarten officially deposited into the vault the 1,004 accessions that were prepared by WorldVeg for this occasion. It has been a privilege for WorldVeg to be part of this global initiative to safeguard the foundation of food and nutrition security for our generation and the generations to come.

Story and photos: Maarten van Zonneveld, Nordgen