More vegetable seed accessions sent for safety duplication

On 8 May, another batch of seeds was collected from the International Vegetable genebank at WorldVeg headquarters in Shanhua, Taiwan, for safety back-up in Korea at the Rural Development Administration (RDA). As part of efforts to ensure its conserved stocks in Taiwan and Tanzania meet international genebank standards, WorldVeg is ensuring that all of its genetic material is safely duplicated in different countries.

This is done because maintaining the viability and availability of seeds stored in genebanks face risks, despite the best efforts to minimize them. Mechanical failures, fires, natural disasters, and power outages without adequate backup, can lead to the loss of environmental control within a storage facility. Political instability and conflicts add additional risks in some countries. So, duplicating seed accessions in another genebank, or in several, ensures that the genetic material is safely conserved for future generations, whatever may happen.

This consignment contained 5,028 accessions of 33 different species, in seven boxes, and was the second batch sent to Korea this year. On 29 February, 2,368 accessions of 97 species arrived safely. The other location where WorldVeg is duplicating its accessions is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, and it was the largest single contributor in 2022. Last year, 8,546 accessions were sent to Svalbard and 7,400 to the RDA genebank in Korea. By the end of 2023, 46,914 accessions (80% of the total collection) were duplicated both in Svalbard and Korea, with 84% backed-up at least in one of these locations. WorldVeg is well on its way to achieving its goal of having all of its seed accessions at the International Vegetable Genebank safely backed-up by the end of 2025.